PUTRAJAYA (Jan 5, 2009) : Former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed has again asked countries who oppose the invasion of Gaza to boycott the greenback as a protest against US’ support for Israel’s invasion.

Tun Mahathir gestures as he speaks at the Perdana Leadership foundation. He also lauded Malaysia’s move to initiate the convening of the UN General Assembly to find a solution to the matter as the assembly can override the decision of the security council.

Blaming the US and Britain for backing the invasion he said: “The dollar is only being used because people accept the greenback as legal tender and if they stop, then the US cannot trade, cannot make money, they will become poor and this will stop them from producing more and more weapons.”

“People who keep all their money in the US are actually responsible for the manufacturing of weapons which are used to kill people. That’s what their money is being used for,” said Mahathir, adding America was a bankrupt country with no money or no reserves, so anyone can go against it if they wanted to.

Mahathir also said while it may be difficult for governments to move, individuals can do their part by boycotting US products. “Governments cannot force people to drink Coca Cola, and you won’t die because you did not drink any Coca Cola,” he cited as an example.

Asked if this would affect Malaysia since the US is its largest trading partner, Mahathir said: “There will be a price to pay to do something good, but if you slowly whittle down involvement with the US, then slowly we will get used to it.”

Mahathir also said: “This is not a religious war. There are many places where the Jews have been living with Muslims for years. “There is no animosity towards the local Jews in these places, so this war is not religious but territorial .”

Mahathir said: “The US who is the ‘policeman of the world’ has given its full backing to the invasion. No candidate in America can afford to say they don’t support the Jews.

“US president-elect Barack Obama’s deputy (Joe Biden) gave an interview saying I’m not a Jew but I’m a Zionist so you can expect the new administration’s stand on this. I don’t think that anyone can be as bad as (George) Bush, so I think that it’s the best of a bad choice,” he said when asked if Obama can make a change.FIRMA MULTINASIONAL BERKAITAN DENGAN YAHUDI PROMOSIKAN HALAL MALAYSIA

PUTRAJAYA (Jan 5, 2009) : Former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed has again asked countries who oppose the invasion of Gaza to boycott the greenback as a protest against US’ support for Israel’s invasion.

Tun Mahathir gestures as he speaks at the Perdana Leadership foundation. He also lauded Malaysia’s move to initiate the convening of the UN General Assembly to find a solution to the matter as the assembly can override the decision of the security council.

Blaming the US and Britain for backing the invasion he said: “The dollar is only being used because people accept the greenback as legal tender and if they stop, then the US cannot trade, cannot make money, they will become poor and this will stop them from producing more and more weapons.”

“People who keep all their money in the US are actually responsible for the manufacturing of weapons which are used to kill people. That’s what their money is being used for,” said Mahathir, adding America was a bankrupt country with no money or no reserves, so anyone can go against it if they wanted to.

Mahathir also said while it may be difficult for governments to move, individuals can do their part by boycotting US products. “Governments cannot force people to drink Coca Cola, and you won’t die because you did not drink any Coca Cola,” he cited as an example.

Asked if this would affect Malaysia since the US is its largest trading partner, Mahathir said: “There will be a price to pay to do something good, but if you slowly whittle down involvement with the US, then slowly we will get used to it.”

Mahathir also said: “This is not a religious war. There are many places where the Jews have been living with Muslims for years. “There is no animosity towards the local Jews in these places, so this war is not religious but territorial .”

Mahathir said: “The US who is the ‘policeman of the world’ has given its full backing to the invasion. No candidate in America can afford to say they don’t support the Jews.

“US president-elect Barack Obama’s deputy (Joe Biden) gave an interview saying I’m not a Jew but I’m a Zionist so you can expect the new administration’s stand on this. I don’t think that anyone can be as bad as (George) Bush, so I think that it’s the best of a bad choice,” he said when asked if Obama can make a change.FIRMA MULTINASIONAL BERKAITAN DENGAN YAHUDI PROMOSIKAN HALAL MALAYSIA

Most history of the Jews in the Netherlands was generated between the end of the sixteenth century and World War II, when approximately 75% of Dutch Jews were killed.

The area now known as The Netherlands was once part of the Spanish empire but in 1581, the northern Dutch provinces declared independence. A principal motive was a wish to practise ProtestantChristianity, then forbidden under Spanish rule, and so religious tolerance was effectively an important constitutional element of the newly-independent state. This inevitably attracted the attention of Jews who were religiously oppressed in many parts of the world.

History of Jews in the Netherlands

Early history

Jews seem not to have lived in the province of Holland before 1593; but a few references to them are in existence which distinctly mention them as present in the other provinces at an earlier date, especially after their expulsion from France in 1321 and the persecutions in Hainaut and the Rhine provinces. The first Jews in the province of Gelderland were reported in 1325. Jews have been settled in Nijmegen, the oldest settlement, in Doesburg, Zutphen, and in Arnhem since 1404. In 1349 the Duke of Gelderland was authorized by the Emperor Louis IV to receive Jews in his duchy. They paid a tax, granted services, and were protected by the law. In Arnhem, where a Jewish person is mentioned as a physician, the magistrate defended them against the hostilities of the populace. When Jews settled in the diocese of Utrecht does not appear. (However, rabbinical records regarding kashrut – Jewish dietary laws – speculated that the Jewish community in Utrecht dated back to Roman times.) In 1444 they were expelled from the city of Utrecht, but they were tolerated in the village of Maarssen, two hours distant, though their condition was not fortunate. Until 1789 no Jew might pass the night in Utrecht; for this reason the community of Maarssen was one of the most important in the Netherlands. Jews were admitted to Zeeland by Albert, Duke of Bavaria.

In 1477, by the marriage of Mary of Burgundy to the Archduke Maximilian, son of Emperor Frederick III, the Netherlands were united to Austria and its possessions passed to the crown of Spain. In the sixteenth century, owing to the persecutions of Charles V and Philip II of Spain, the Netherlands became involved in a series of desperate and heroic struggles. Charles V had, in 1522, issued a proclamation against Christians who were suspected of being lax in the faith and against Jews who had not been baptized in Gelderland and Utrecht; and he repeated these edicts in 1545 and 1549. In 1571 the Duke of Alba notified the authorities of Arnhem that all Jews living there should be seized and held until the disposition to be made of them had been determined upon. In 1581, however, the memorable declaration of independence issued by the deputies of the United Provinces deposed Philip from his sovereignty; religious peace was guaranteed by article 13 of the Unie van Utrecht. As a consequence the persecuted Jews of Spain and Portugal turned toward Holland as a place of refuge.

Marranos and Sephardic Jews

The Sephardim (so-called Spanish Jews) had been expelled from Spain and Portugal years earlier, but many remained in the Iberian peninsula, practising Judaism in secret (see crypto-Jews or Marranos). The newly independent Dutch provinces provided an ideal opportunity for the crypto-Jews to re-establish themselves and practise their religion openly, and they migrated, most notably to Amsterdam. Collectively, they brought trading influence to the city as they established in Amsterdam.

In 1593 these Marranos arrived in Amsterdam after having been refused admission to Middelburg and Haarlem. These Jews were important merchants and persons of great ability. They labored assiduously in the cause of the people and contributed materially to the prosperity of the country. They became strenuous supporters of the house of Orange and were in return protected by the stadholder. At this time the commerce of Holland was increasing; a period of development had arrived, particularly for Amsterdam, to which Jews had carried their goods and from which they maintained their relations with foreign lands. Thus they had connections with the Levant and with Morocco. The Emperor of Morocco had an ambassador at The Hague named Samuel Pallache (1591-1626), through whose mediation, in 1620, a commercial understanding was arrived at with the Barbary States.

In particular, the relations between the Dutch and South America were established by Jews; they contributed to the establishment of the Dutch West Indies Company in 1621, of the directorate of which some of them were members. The ambitious schemes of the Dutch for the conquest of Brazil were carried into effect through Francisco Ribiero, a Portuguese captain, who is said to have had Jewish relations in Holland. As some years afterward the Dutch in Brazil appealed to Holland for craftsmen of all kinds, many Jews went to Brazil; about 600 Jews left Amsterdam in 1642, accompanied by two distinguished scholars – Isaac Aboab da Fonseca and Moses Raphael de Aguilar. In the struggle between Holland and Portugal for the possession of Brazil the Dutch were supported by the Jews.

With various countries in Europe also the Jews of Amsterdam established commercial relations. In a letter dated November 25, 1622, King Christian IV of Denmark invites Jews of Amsterdam to settle in Glückstadt, where, among other privileges, the free exercise of their religion would be assured to them.

Interior of the Amsterdam Esnoga, the synagogue for the Portuguese-Israelite (Sephardic) community which was inaugurated at August 2th 1675 and is still being used by the Jewish community.

Besides merchants, a great number of physicians were among the Spanish Jews in Amsterdam: Samuel Abravanel, David Nieto, Elijah Montalto, and the Bueno family; Joseph Bueno was consulted in the illness of Prince Maurice (April, 1623). Jews were admitted as students at the university, where they studied medicine as the only branch of science which was of practical use to them, for they were not permitted to practise law, and the oath they would be compelled to take excluded them from the professorships. Neither were Jews taken into the trade-guilds: a resolution passed by the city of Amsterdam in 1632 (the cities being autonomous) excluded them. Exceptions, however, were made in the case of trades which stood in peculiar relations to their religion: printing, bookselling, the selling of meat, poultry, groceries, and drugs. In 1655 a Jew was, exceptionally, permitted to establish a sugar-refinery. One particular Sephardic Jew also stood out during that time: his name was Benedictus de Spinoza (or Baruch Spinoza). He was excommunicated from the Jewish community in 1656 after speaking out his ideas concerning (the nature of) God in his famous work Ethics.

Ashkenazim

Many Ashkenazim (so-called “German Jews”) were also attracted to the newly independent Dutch provinces, especially near the end of the 17th century. However, the majority were displaced migrants escaping persecution in other parts of northern Europe, in particular the violence of the Thirty Year War (1618-1648) and the Chmielnicki Uprising in Poland in 1648. Because most of the immigrants were poor, they were less welcome. Their arrival in considerable number threatened the economic status of Amsterdam in particular, and with few exceptions they were turned away. Generally, they settled in rural areas where they subsisted typically as pedlars and hawkers. The result was that a large number of small Jewish communities existed throughout the Dutch provinces.

Over time, many of these German Jews attained prosperity through retail trading and by diamond-cutting, in which latter industry they retained the monopoly until about 1870. When William IV was proclaimed stadholder (1747) the Jews found another protector like William III. He stood in very close relations with the head of the DePinto family, at whose villa, Tulpenburg, near Ouderkerk, he and his wife paid more than one visit. In 1748, when a French army was at the frontier and the treasury was empty, De Pinto collected a large sum and presented it to the state. Van Hogendorp, the secretary of state, wrote to him: “You have saved the state.” In 1750 De Pinto arranged for the conversion of the national debt from a 4 to a 3% basis.

Under the government of William V the country was troubled by internal dissensions; the Jews, however, remained loyal to him. As he entered the legislature on the day of his majority, March 8, 1766, everywhere in the synagogues services of thanks-giving were held. William V did not forget his Jewish subjects. On June 3, 1768, he visited both the German and the Portuguese synagogue; he attended the marriage of various prominent Jewish families.

The number of Jews in the Netherlands grew substantially from the early 19th century up to World War II. Between 1830 and 1930, the Jewish presence in the Netherlands increased by almost 250% (numbers giving by the Jewish communities to the Dutch Census).

(*) Derived from those persons who stated “Judaism” as their religion in the Dutch Census

(**) Persons with at least one Jewish grandparent. In another Nazi census the total number of people with at least one Jewish grandparent in the Netherlands was put at 160,886: 135,984 people with 4 or 3 Jewish grandparents (counted as “full Jews”); 18,912 Jews with 2 Jewish grandparents (“half Jews”), of whom 3,538 were part of a Jewish congregation; 5,990 with 1 Jewish grandparent (“quarter Jews”)[2]

(***) Membership numbers of Dutch Jewish congregations (only those who are Jewish according to the Halakha)

The Holocaust

In 1939 there were some 140,000 Dutch Jews living in the Netherlands, among them some 25,000 German-Jewish refugees who had fled Germany in the 1930s (other sources claim that some 34,000 Jewish refugees entered the Netherlands between 1933 and 1940, mostly from Germany and Austria [3]). The Nazi occupation force put the number of (racially) Dutch Jews in 1941 at some 154,000. In the Nazi census, some 121,000 persons declared they were members of the (Ashkenazi) Dutch-Israelite community; 4,300 persons declared they were members of the (Sephardic) Portuguese-Israelite community. Some 19,000 persons reported having two Jewish grandparents (although it is generally believed a proportion of this number had in fact three Jewish grandparents, but declined to state that number in the fear they would be seen as Jews instead of half-Jews by the Nazi authorities). Some 6,000 persons reported having one Jewish grandparent. Some 2,500 persons counted in the census as Jewish were part of a Christian church (mostly Dutch Reformed, Calvinist Reformed or Roman Catholic).

In 1941, the majority of Dutch Jews were living in Amsterdam. The census in 1941 gives an indication of the geographical spread of Dutch Jews at the beginning of the Second World War (province; number of Jews – this number is not based on the racial standards by the Nazis, but by what the persons themselves declared to be in the population census):

In 1945 only about 35,000 of them were still alive. The exact number of “full Jews” who survived the Holocaust is estimated to be 34,379 (of whom 8,500 were part of a mixed marriage and thus spared from deportation and possible death in the Nazi concentration camps); the number of “half Jews” who were present in the Netherlands at the end of the Second World War in 1945 is estimated to be 14,545, the number of “quarter Jews” 5,990[4]. Some 75% of the Dutch-Jewish population perished, one of the highest percentages of all Nazi-occupied countries – despite the fact that Dutch Jews seemed to be more tolerated by and more integrated in the Dutch population than for example the Jews in Poland in the Polish population. Factors that influenced the great number of people perished were the fact that the Netherlands was not under a military regime, because the queen fled to England, and a shortage of hiding places. The Netherlands is a dense populated country, so there was less opportunity to survive in forests or other natural hidingplaces, for example.

During the first year of the occupation of the Netherlands, Jews were forced to register with the authorities and were banned from certain occupations. Starting in January, 1942, some Dutch Jews were forced to move to Amsterdam; others were directly deported to Westerbork, a concentration camp near the small village of Hooghalen which had been founded in 1939 by the Dutch government to give shelter to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution, but would fulfill the function of transit camp to the Nazi destruction camps in Middle and Eastern Europe during World War II.

Monument at Westerbork: Each single stone represents a single person that had stayed at Westerbork and died in a Nazi camp

All non-Dutch Jews were also sent to Westerbork. Additionally, over 15,000 Jews were sent to labor camps. Deportations of Jews from the Netherlands to Poland and Germany began at June 15th of 1942 and ended at September 13th 1944. Ultimately some 101,000 Jews were deported in 98 transports from Westerbork to Auschwitz (57,800; 65 transports), Sobibor (34,313; 19 transports), Bergen-Belsen (3,724; 8 transports) and Theresienstadt (4,466; 6 transports), where most of them were murdered. Another 6,000 Jews were deported from other locations (like Vught) in the Netherlands to concentration camps in Germany, Poland and Austria (like Mauthausen). Only 5,200 survived. The Dutch underground hid a large number of Jews, as many as 25,000-30,000; eventually, an estimated 16,500 Jews managed to survive the war by hiding. Some 7,000 to 8,000 survived by fleeing to countries like Spain, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, or by being married to non-Jews (which saved them from deportation and possible death). At the same time, there was substantial collaboration as the Amsterdam city administration, the Dutch municipal police, and Dutch railway workers all helped round up and deport Jews. It is said that in many cases, from arrest to deportation from Westerbork to the destruction camps in Poland and Germany, all work was done by ethnic Dutch. The last couple of years the Dutch media has spent considerable time and effort to debunk the widespread myth among the population that the Dutch Jews were met with considerable support and help from both the Dutch population as well as from the Dutch government during the Second World War; instead, more than 75% of the Dutch Jewish population died between 1940-1945, with the help and support of thousands of ethnic Dutch, while the majority of the population seems to have had a fairly indifferent view towards their Jewish compatriots during the war.

However, survivor rates differed in certain parts of the Netherlands. In Groningen, more than 90% of the Jewish population was killed; in Eindhoven, this number was just above 40%. Contrary to popular belief, Jewish survivors were met with hostility and indifference on the part of the Dutch government in the years following the Second World War.

In contrast to many other countries where all aspects of Jewish communities and culture were eradicated during the Shoah, a remarkably large proportion of rabbinic records survived in Amsterdam, making the history of Dutch Jewry unusually well documented.

Today

There are approximately 41,000 to 45,000 people in the Netherlands who are either Jewish as defined by halakha (Rabbinic law), defined as having a Jewish mother (70% – approximately 30,000 persons) or who have a Jewish father (30% – some 10,000 – 15,000 persons; their number was estimated at 12,470 in April 2006).[5][6].

Anne Frank

Most Dutch Jews live in the major cities in the west of the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht); some 44% of all Dutch Jews live in Amsterdam, which is considered the centre of Jewish life in the Netherlands. In 2000, 20% of the Jewish-Dutch population was 65 years or older; birth rates among Jews were low. An exception is the growing Orthodox Jewish population, especially in Amsterdam.

The Jewish-Dutch population after the Second World War is marked by certain significant changes: emigration; a low birth rate; and a high intermarriage rate. After the Second World War and the devastations which were caused by the Holocaust, thousands of surviving Jews migrated to Israel (still home to some 6,000 Dutch Jews) and the United States. In 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War in the Netherlands, the total number of Jews as counted in the population census was just 14,346 (down from a count of 154,887 by the German occupation force in 1941). Later, this number was adjusted by Jewish organisations to some 24,000 Jews living in the Netherlands in 1954 – nevertheless an enormous decrease compared to the number of Jews counted in 1941 – a number which was also disputed as the German occupation force counted Jews on basis of race, which meant that for example hundreds of Christians of Jewish heritage were also included in the Nazi census (according to Raul Hilberg in his book ‘Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: the Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945’, “the Netherlands … [had] 1,572 Protestants [of Jewish heritage in 1943] … There were also some 700 Catholic Jews living in the Netherlands [during the Nazi occupation] …”)

In 1954, the geographical spread of Dutch Jews in the Netherlands was as follows (province; number of Jews):

The sixties and seventies of the 20th century saw a lowering birth rate among Dutch Jews, while intermarriage increased; was the intermarriage rate among Jewish males 41% and among Jewish women 28% in the period of 1945-1949, figures from the nineties saw an increase of intermarriage to some 52% of the total number of marriages among Jews. Among so-called father Jews, the intermarriage rate is as high as 80%[7]. Some within the Jewish community try to counter this trend, creating possibilities for (single) Jews to come in contact with other (single) Jews, like the dating site Jingles, Jentl en Jewell. According to a research by the Joods Maatschappelijk Werk (Jewish Social Service), a large number of Dutch Jews has received an academic education, and more Jewish Dutch women are in the labor force compared to non-Jewish Dutch women.

The Jewish population in the Netherlands also seems to become more and more internationalised, with an influx of mostly Israeli and Russian Jews during the last decades. Approximately one in three Dutch Jews has a non-Dutch background. The number of Israeli Jews living in the Netherlands (concentrated in Amsterdam) runs in the thousands (estimates run from 5,000 to 7,000 Israeli immigrants in the Netherlands, although some claims go as high as 12,000 [8]), although only a relatively small number of these Israeli Jews is connected to one of the religious Jewish institutions in the Netherlands. Some 10,000 Dutch Jews have emigrated to Israel in the last couple of decades.

Religion

A majority of the affiliated Jews in the Netherlands (Jews part of a Jewish community) are affiliated to the Nederlands Israëlitisch Kerkgenootschap (Dutch Israelite Church) (NIK), which can be classified as part of (Ashkenazi) Orthodox Judaism. The NIK has approximately 5,000 members, spread over 36 congregations (of whom 13 in Amsterdam and surroundings alone) in 4 jurisdictions (Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and the Interprovincial Rabbinate), making it considerably larger than the Union of Liberal Synagogues (LJG) and thirteen times as large as the Portuguese Israelite Religious Community (PIK). In Amsterdam alone, the NIK governs thirteen functioning synagogues. The NIK was founded in 1814, and at its height in 1877, it represented 176 Jewish communities. This went down to 139 communities prior to World War II, and 36 communities today. Besides governing some 36 congregations, the NIK also holds responsibility for more than 200 Jewish cemeteries throughout the Netherlands (on a total number of Jewish cemeteries of 250).

Though the number of Dutch Jews is decreasing, the last decades have seen a growth of Liberal Jewish communities throughout the country. Introduced by German-Jewish refugees in the early 1930s, nowadays some 3,500 Jews in the Netherlands are linked to one of several Liberal Jewish synagogues throughout the country. Liberal synagogues are present in Amsterdam (founded in 1931; 725 families – some 1,700 members), Rotterdam (1968), The Hague (1959; 324 families), Tilburg (1981), Utrecht (1993), Arnhem (1965; 70 families), Enschede (1972), Almere (2003) and Heerenveen (2000; some 30 members); six rabbis are present to serve the several communities. The Verbond voor Liberaal-Religieuze Joden in Nederland (LJG) (Union for Liberal-Religious Jews in the Netherlands) (to which all the communities mentioned above are part of) is affiliated to the World Union for Progressive Judaism. On October 29th 2006, the LJG changed its name to Nederlands Verbond voor Progressief Jodendom (NVPJ) (Dutch Union for Progressive Judaism). The NVPJ has six rabbis: Ruben Bar-Ephraïm, Menno ten Brink, Sonny Herman, David Lilienthal, Awraham Soetendorp and Edward van Voolen

In the late 19th Century, at Oss in Brabant, the Netherlands, Jurgens and Van den Bergh – two family businesses of butter merchants – have thriving export trades to the UK.

In the early 1870s, they become interested in a new product made from beef fat and milk – margarine – which, they realise, could be mass-produced as an affordable substitute for butter.

Later, over in the North of England in the mid-1880s, a successful wholesale family grocery business run by William Lever starts producing a new type of household soap. The product contains copra or pine kernel oil, which help it lather more easily than traditional soaps made of animal fats. Unusually for the time, Lever gives the soap a brand name – Sunlight – and sells it wrapped in distinctive packs.

1904In the UK, Lever Brothers launch another product to make housework easier – Vim, one of the first scouring powders.

The company is incorporated in South Africa.

1906By now Lever Brothers has a thriving export trade and factories in three European countries as well as one each in Canada, Australia and the US. It has also started enterprises in the Pacific.

The same year Lever Brothers comes to an agreement with three other manufacturers to limit competition for raw materials, but is attacked by the press who, dubbing them ‘The Soap Trust’, accuse them of driving up prices. Lever Brothers subsequently sues the Daily Mail and in 1907 wins £50 000 damages – a massive settlement by the standards of the time.

1908Jurgens and Van den Bergh strike a deal to form an association and share profits while continuing to compete against each other.

1909Lever Brothers develops a palm plantation in the Solomon Islands and at the same time Jurgens and Van den Bergh set up a joint palm-planting venture in German Africa

1910Lever Brothers buys its first company in West Africa, WB MacIver Ltd, to secure supplies of palm oil for Port Sunlight.

1911Lever Brother’s first purpose-built research laboratory is constructed at Port Sunlight.

1912The first profit-sharing deal between Jurgens and Van den Bergh is terminated but the two companies continue to work together.

1913Leading businesses in the Europe join forces to create the Whale Oil Pool.

1914In the year that war breaks out, companies controlled by Lever Brothers are making about 135 000 tons of soap a year, while in the Netherlands Jurgens and Van den Bergh have both acquired a number of smaller businesses and each also controls seven margarine factories in Germany.

Lever Brothers acquires Pears Soap, a company founded in 1789, and Jurgens forms an alliance with Kellogg’s in preparation for expansion into North America.

Around this time Jurgens and Van den Bergh both establish factories in England, with one in Purfleet, Essex still manufacturing margarine today.

Lever Brothers also expands into the margarine market with the launch of Planters, increases operations in South Africa and sees its American business start to move into profit

1920Lever Brothers gains control of the Niger Company, which later became part of the United Africa Company.

1922Lever Brothers buys Wall’s, a popular sausage company which is beginning to produce ice cream to sell in the summer when demand for sausages falls.

1923The collapse of the German economy creates even harsher trading conditions for Jurgens and Van den Bergh.

1925Lever Brothers buys British Oil & Cake Mills, one of its major competitors and the manufacturer of New Pin Soap.

1926Lever Brothers launches its Clean Hands Campaign. Part of its child health policy, it educates children about dirt and germs and encouraging them to wash their hands ‘before breakfast, before dinner and after school.’

1927Jurgens and Van den Bergh, who have already teamed up with two European businesses, Centra and Schicht, join forces to create Margarine Unie – the Margarine Union. The union quickly gains new members, creating a large group of European businesses involved in the production of almost all goods created from oils and fats.

1928Margarine Unie acquires the French-Dutch Calvé-Delft group with factories in the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Czechoslovakia. The following year the Union also acquires the firm of Hartog’s.

1930On 1 January Unilever is officially established.

1930Procter & Gamble enters the UK market with the acquisition of Thomas Hedley Ltd of Newcastle and becomes one of Unilever’s largest rivals.

Mid 30sSoap production moves further from hard soaps to flakes and powders designed to make lighter work of household cleaning. This leads to expansion in the soap market.

1935Vitamins A & D are added to margarine, to levels equivalent to those found in butter.

1938After a campaign to improve public perceptions of margarine and the growth of vitamin-enriched brands including Stork in the UK and Blue Band in the Netherlands, sales of margarine rise to levels close to the highs of 1929.

Late 30s With the advent of the World War II, exchange controls and frozen currencies make international trading increasingly complex. In Germany, Unilever is unable to move profits out of the country and has to invest instead in enterprises unconnected with oils and fats including public utilities.

On 2 September Lever Brothers and Margarine Unie sign an agreement to create Unilever. The businesses initially aim to negotiate an arrangement to keep out of each other’s principal interests of soap and margarine production, but ultimately decide on an amalgamation instead.

1943Unilever becomes the majority shareholder in Frosted Foods which owns Birds Eye and the UK rights to a method of food preservation new to mass markets – deep-freezing. Years later, freezing will enjoy a resurgence of popularity when it’s shown to be one of the best ways of naturally preserving the goodness of fresh food.

Around the same time Unilever acquires Batchelor’s, which specialises in freeze-dried vegetables and canned goods.

1945At the end of the war, Unilever is able to regain control of its international network although remains shut out from Eastern Europe and China. The decentralisation of the business that was unavoidable during wartime is continued as a policy decision.

1946Birds Eye launches the first frozen peas in the UK. At this time meat, fish, ice cream and canned goods account for only 9% of Unilever’s total turnover

1954Sunsilk shampoo is launched in the UK and will become our leading shampoo brand – by 1959 it’s available in 18 countries worldwide.

1955On the 22 September Unilever airs the very first advertisement on UK commercial TV, which is for Gibbs SR toothpaste.

Fish fingers are introduced in the UK and within a decade they account for 10 percent of British fish consumption.

Dove soap is launched in US.

1956Unilever Research establishes its Biology Department, which in the 1980s will become the BioScience, Nutrition and Safety unit.

The PG Tips chimps make their debut appearance on the UK’s newly launched commercial TV station. Aired on Christmas Day, the commercial is inspired by London Zoo’s chimpanzees’ tea party. It results in PG Tips becoming the UK’s biggest selling tea brand.

The first Miss Pears is crowned in the Pear’s Soap famous beauty contest celebrating the beauty of natural, clear complexions.

1958In the Netherlands Unilever expands into frozen foods and ice cream through the acquisition of Vita NV, which was later to become the Iglo Mora Group.

1959Unilever launches its first margarine in a tub, replacing the traditional block wrapped in greaseproof paper, with Blauband in Germany followed by Flora in Britain.

1960All washing-related brands are placed under the control of a single company, Lever Brothers and Associates. Becel, the pioneering ‘health’ margarine, is launched after the medical community asks Unilever to develop a cholesterol-lowering food product. Initially it’s only available from pharmacies.

1961Good Humor ice cream is acquired in the US.

1963Cornetto, the first packaged and branded ice cream cone, begins its launch in Europe. Becel is repositioned as a diet margarine and distribution is widened to include the grocery sector.

1965Unilever forms its own specialist packaging business, the 4P Group, turning an internal service provider into a profit earning business. Cif is first launched, starting in France.

1967Captain Birds Eye/Iglo/Frudesa makes his first appearance in TV commercials.

1968Unilever attempts unsuccesfully to merge with Allied Breweries, one of the UK’s largest brewing companies.

1969Unilever airs the UK’s first ever colour TV commercial, which is for Birds Eye peas.

1982Viennetta ice cream gateaux is first launched, starting in Britain as a Christmas speciality.

1983Axe body spray for men (Lynx in the UK) is first launched, starting in France.

1984Unilever announces its Core Business Strategy and large acquisitions and disposals follow over next decade.

Brooke Bond is acquired in Unilever’s first hostile take-over.

1985Unipath launches a home pregnancy testing kit Clearblue, which is sold through pharmaceutical outlets in Britain.

1986The acquisition of Naarden doubles Unilever’s business in fragrances and food flavours. Chesebrough-Pond’s, which owns Pond’s and Vaseline, is acquired in the US.

1987Dove is relaunched in Europe, starting in Italy.

1989Calvin Klein and Elizabeth Arden/Fabergé are acquired while Magnum ice cream is launched in Germany.

1992Unilever enters the Czech Republic and Hungary, and establishes UniRus in Russia.

1993Breyers ice cream is acquired in the US and Organics shampoo is first launched in Thailand. By 1995 Organics is sold in over 40 countries.

The unprecedented decision is taken to practically eliminate trans-fats from food production in a rapid response to new research suggesting that their effect on blood cholesterol is at least as adverse as that of saturated fats.

1996Unilever makes an ambitious commitment to source all fish from sustainable stocks and starts working with the WWF to establish a certification programme for sustainable fisheries known as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).

Hindustan Lever and Brooke Bond Lipton India merge to create India’s largest private sector company, and the Helene Curtis hair care business in the US is acquired.

The Unilever Nutrition Centre is created.

Annapurna iodised salt is launched in India and starts to make a big impact on redressing iodine deficiency.

1997Kibon ice cream is acquired in Brazil. Unilever’s chemicals businesses including National Starch and Quest International are sold.

1999Shareholders authorise a special dividend of €7.4 billion and a share consolidation to reduce the number of shares per issue.

2000Bestfoods is acquired in the second-largest cash acquisition in history. Other acquisitions include Slim.Fast Foods, Ben & Jerry’s and the Amora-Maille culinary business in France.

Becel/Flora pro.activ spreads with cholesterol-lowering plant sterols are launched and become the first functional food to win FDA and EU approval.

The Unilever Health Institute – a centre of excellence in nutrition, health and Vitality – is launched.

Unilever screens the first interactive advertisement: it’s broadcast on Sky’s Open channel and promotes Chicken Tonight.

2001By 2001 Unilever has cut its brands from 1,600 to 900. DiverseyLever, Elizabeth Arden and Unipath are sold.

Unilever screens the first interactive TV commercial on a mainstream terrestrial channel in the UK; it promotes Colman’s and Olivio.

2002The portfolio is reshaped and enhanced through acquisitions and the sale of 87 businesses without acceptable growth or margin potential, generating €6.3 billion of sale proceeds.

The Skin, Hair and Deodorant businesses grow by nearly 11%, partly through the continuing success of Rexona, Lux and Dove. Dove sales are well in excess of €2 billion and its extension into the hair category is rolled out across Europe and Latin America.

Unilever is consulted by the WHO regarding the development of a Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health (published May 2004).

Our Nutrition Policy and Nutrition and Health Academy are launched.

Unilever leads a UK cross-industry initiative to reduce salt levels in soups and meal sauces and the Healthy Heart Brand signs a three-year sponsorship deal with the World Heart Federation.

By the end of 2003 the business is buying half its fish from sustainable sources and water consumption per tonne of production is down by 13%.

2004The Vitality mission is launched and the new Unilever brand rolled out, including the new logo which represents the diversity of Unilever, our products and our people.

At the end of Q3, Unilever revises its earnings guidance for the year to low single-digit earnings per share growth (beia) and announces that the development of leading brands is likely to be lower in Q3 than Q2.

A variety of factors have led to this, including further decline in Home & Personal Care markets in Western Europe and competition remaining intense in Laundry and Hair in Asia. Unilever’s popular weight management system, Slim.Fast, is also hit by huge new consumer interest in low-carbohydrate diets, particularly in the US.

Simplification and cost-saving activities proceed and Unilever chairmen Antony Burgmans and Niall FitzGerald comment that “We are stepping up our marketplace activity, including putting additional A&P funds behind a number of high priority marketplace initiatives.”

Axe Touch is launched with great success in the US and Sunsilk is rolled out in Europe.

2005In February, Unilever announces a series of changes to streamline its management and leadership. Antony Burgmans becomes non-executive chairman of both Unilever N.V. and Unilever PLC while Patrick Cescau takes on the new role of group chief executive, responsible for all operations. A review of the Group structure is also announced.

The changes are designed to provide greater clarity of leadership and a platform for Unilever to focus on the needs of customers and consumers, and so reignite growth.

In May, Unilever sells its global prestige fragrance business, Unilever Cosmetics International (UCI), to Coty Inc, of the US. The sale is in line with Unilever’s strategy to focus on core categories.

The Nutrition Enhancement Programme is completed, through which 16,000 products have been assessed for levels of trans fats, saturated fats, sodium and sugars, and where necessary, action taken.

Most history of the Jews in the Netherlands was generated between the end of the sixteenth century and World War II, when approximately 75% of Dutch Jews were killed.

The area now known as The Netherlands was once part of the Spanish empire but in 1581, the northern Dutch provinces declared independence. A principal motive was a wish to practise ProtestantChristianity, then forbidden under Spanish rule, and so religious tolerance was effectively an important constitutional element of the newly-independent state. This inevitably attracted the attention of Jews who were religiously oppressed in many parts of the world.

History of Jews in the Netherlands

Early history

Jews seem not to have lived in the province of Holland before 1593; but a few references to them are in existence which distinctly mention them as present in the other provinces at an earlier date, especially after their expulsion from France in 1321 and the persecutions in Hainaut and the Rhine provinces. The first Jews in the province of Gelderland were reported in 1325. Jews have been settled in Nijmegen, the oldest settlement, in Doesburg, Zutphen, and in Arnhem since 1404. In 1349 the Duke of Gelderland was authorized by the Emperor Louis IV to receive Jews in his duchy. They paid a tax, granted services, and were protected by the law. In Arnhem, where a Jewish person is mentioned as a physician, the magistrate defended them against the hostilities of the populace. When Jews settled in the diocese of Utrecht does not appear. (However, rabbinical records regarding kashrut – Jewish dietary laws – speculated that the Jewish community in Utrecht dated back to Roman times.) In 1444 they were expelled from the city of Utrecht, but they were tolerated in the village of Maarssen, two hours distant, though their condition was not fortunate. Until 1789 no Jew might pass the night in Utrecht; for this reason the community of Maarssen was one of the most important in the Netherlands. Jews were admitted to Zeeland by Albert, Duke of Bavaria.

In 1477, by the marriage of Mary of Burgundy to the Archduke Maximilian, son of Emperor Frederick III, the Netherlands were united to Austria and its possessions passed to the crown of Spain. In the sixteenth century, owing to the persecutions of Charles V and Philip II of Spain, the Netherlands became involved in a series of desperate and heroic struggles. Charles V had, in 1522, issued a proclamation against Christians who were suspected of being lax in the faith and against Jews who had not been baptized in Gelderland and Utrecht; and he repeated these edicts in 1545 and 1549. In 1571 the Duke of Alba notified the authorities of Arnhem that all Jews living there should be seized and held until the disposition to be made of them had been determined upon. In 1581, however, the memorable declaration of independence issued by the deputies of the United Provinces deposed Philip from his sovereignty; religious peace was guaranteed by article 13 of the Unie van Utrecht. As a consequence the persecuted Jews of Spain and Portugal turned toward Holland as a place of refuge.

Marranos and Sephardic Jews

The Sephardim (so-called Spanish Jews) had been expelled from Spain and Portugal years earlier, but many remained in the Iberian peninsula, practising Judaism in secret (see crypto-Jews or Marranos). The newly independent Dutch provinces provided an ideal opportunity for the crypto-Jews to re-establish themselves and practise their religion openly, and they migrated, most notably to Amsterdam. Collectively, they brought trading influence to the city as they established in Amsterdam.

In 1593 these Marranos arrived in Amsterdam after having been refused admission to Middelburg and Haarlem. These Jews were important merchants and persons of great ability. They labored assiduously in the cause of the people and contributed materially to the prosperity of the country. They became strenuous supporters of the house of Orange and were in return protected by the stadholder. At this time the commerce of Holland was increasing; a period of development had arrived, particularly for Amsterdam, to which Jews had carried their goods and from which they maintained their relations with foreign lands. Thus they had connections with the Levant and with Morocco. The Emperor of Morocco had an ambassador at The Hague named Samuel Pallache (1591-1626), through whose mediation, in 1620, a commercial understanding was arrived at with the Barbary States.

In particular, the relations between the Dutch and South America were established by Jews; they contributed to the establishment of the Dutch West Indies Company in 1621, of the directorate of which some of them were members. The ambitious schemes of the Dutch for the conquest of Brazil were carried into effect through Francisco Ribiero, a Portuguese captain, who is said to have had Jewish relations in Holland. As some years afterward the Dutch in Brazil appealed to Holland for craftsmen of all kinds, many Jews went to Brazil; about 600 Jews left Amsterdam in 1642, accompanied by two distinguished scholars – Isaac Aboab da Fonseca and Moses Raphael de Aguilar. In the struggle between Holland and Portugal for the possession of Brazil the Dutch were supported by the Jews.

With various countries in Europe also the Jews of Amsterdam established commercial relations. In a letter dated November 25, 1622, King Christian IV of Denmark invites Jews of Amsterdam to settle in Glückstadt, where, among other privileges, the free exercise of their religion would be assured to them.

Interior of the Amsterdam Esnoga, the synagogue for the Portuguese-Israelite (Sephardic) community which was inaugurated at August 2th 1675 and is still being used by the Jewish community.

Besides merchants, a great number of physicians were among the Spanish Jews in Amsterdam: Samuel Abravanel, David Nieto, Elijah Montalto, and the Bueno family; Joseph Bueno was consulted in the illness of Prince Maurice (April, 1623). Jews were admitted as students at the university, where they studied medicine as the only branch of science which was of practical use to them, for they were not permitted to practise law, and the oath they would be compelled to take excluded them from the professorships. Neither were Jews taken into the trade-guilds: a resolution passed by the city of Amsterdam in 1632 (the cities being autonomous) excluded them. Exceptions, however, were made in the case of trades which stood in peculiar relations to their religion: printing, bookselling, the selling of meat, poultry, groceries, and drugs. In 1655 a Jew was, exceptionally, permitted to establish a sugar-refinery. One particular Sephardic Jew also stood out during that time: his name was Benedictus de Spinoza (or Baruch Spinoza). He was excommunicated from the Jewish community in 1656 after speaking out his ideas concerning (the nature of) God in his famous work Ethics.

Ashkenazim

Many Ashkenazim (so-called “German Jews”) were also attracted to the newly independent Dutch provinces, especially near the end of the 17th century. However, the majority were displaced migrants escaping persecution in other parts of northern Europe, in particular the violence of the Thirty Year War (1618-1648) and the Chmielnicki Uprising in Poland in 1648. Because most of the immigrants were poor, they were less welcome. Their arrival in considerable number threatened the economic status of Amsterdam in particular, and with few exceptions they were turned away. Generally, they settled in rural areas where they subsisted typically as pedlars and hawkers. The result was that a large number of small Jewish communities existed throughout the Dutch provinces.

Over time, many of these German Jews attained prosperity through retail trading and by diamond-cutting, in which latter industry they retained the monopoly until about 1870. When William IV was proclaimed stadholder (1747) the Jews found another protector like William III. He stood in very close relations with the head of the DePinto family, at whose villa, Tulpenburg, near Ouderkerk, he and his wife paid more than one visit. In 1748, when a French army was at the frontier and the treasury was empty, De Pinto collected a large sum and presented it to the state. Van Hogendorp, the secretary of state, wrote to him: “You have saved the state.” In 1750 De Pinto arranged for the conversion of the national debt from a 4 to a 3% basis.

Under the government of William V the country was troubled by internal dissensions; the Jews, however, remained loyal to him. As he entered the legislature on the day of his majority, March 8, 1766, everywhere in the synagogues services of thanks-giving were held. William V did not forget his Jewish subjects. On June 3, 1768, he visited both the German and the Portuguese synagogue; he attended the marriage of various prominent Jewish families.

The number of Jews in the Netherlands grew substantially from the early 19th century up to World War II. Between 1830 and 1930, the Jewish presence in the Netherlands increased by almost 250% (numbers giving by the Jewish communities to the Dutch Census).

(*) Derived from those persons who stated “Judaism” as their religion in the Dutch Census

(**) Persons with at least one Jewish grandparent. In another Nazi census the total number of people with at least one Jewish grandparent in the Netherlands was put at 160,886: 135,984 people with 4 or 3 Jewish grandparents (counted as “full Jews”); 18,912 Jews with 2 Jewish grandparents (“half Jews”), of whom 3,538 were part of a Jewish congregation; 5,990 with 1 Jewish grandparent (“quarter Jews”)[2]

(***) Membership numbers of Dutch Jewish congregations (only those who are Jewish according to the Halakha)

The Holocaust

In 1939 there were some 140,000 Dutch Jews living in the Netherlands, among them some 25,000 German-Jewish refugees who had fled Germany in the 1930s (other sources claim that some 34,000 Jewish refugees entered the Netherlands between 1933 and 1940, mostly from Germany and Austria [3]). The Nazi occupation force put the number of (racially) Dutch Jews in 1941 at some 154,000. In the Nazi census, some 121,000 persons declared they were members of the (Ashkenazi) Dutch-Israelite community; 4,300 persons declared they were members of the (Sephardic) Portuguese-Israelite community. Some 19,000 persons reported having two Jewish grandparents (although it is generally believed a proportion of this number had in fact three Jewish grandparents, but declined to state that number in the fear they would be seen as Jews instead of half-Jews by the Nazi authorities). Some 6,000 persons reported having one Jewish grandparent. Some 2,500 persons counted in the census as Jewish were part of a Christian church (mostly Dutch Reformed, Calvinist Reformed or Roman Catholic).

In 1941, the majority of Dutch Jews were living in Amsterdam. The census in 1941 gives an indication of the geographical spread of Dutch Jews at the beginning of the Second World War (province; number of Jews – this number is not based on the racial standards by the Nazis, but by what the persons themselves declared to be in the population census):

In 1945 only about 35,000 of them were still alive. The exact number of “full Jews” who survived the Holocaust is estimated to be 34,379 (of whom 8,500 were part of a mixed marriage and thus spared from deportation and possible death in the Nazi concentration camps); the number of “half Jews” who were present in the Netherlands at the end of the Second World War in 1945 is estimated to be 14,545, the number of “quarter Jews” 5,990[4]. Some 75% of the Dutch-Jewish population perished, one of the highest percentages of all Nazi-occupied countries – despite the fact that Dutch Jews seemed to be more tolerated by and more integrated in the Dutch population than for example the Jews in Poland in the Polish population. Factors that influenced the great number of people perished were the fact that the Netherlands was not under a military regime, because the queen fled to England, and a shortage of hiding places. The Netherlands is a dense populated country, so there was less opportunity to survive in forests or other natural hidingplaces, for example.

During the first year of the occupation of the Netherlands, Jews were forced to register with the authorities and were banned from certain occupations. Starting in January, 1942, some Dutch Jews were forced to move to Amsterdam; others were directly deported to Westerbork, a concentration camp near the small village of Hooghalen which had been founded in 1939 by the Dutch government to give shelter to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution, but would fulfill the function of transit camp to the Nazi destruction camps in Middle and Eastern Europe during World War II.

Monument at Westerbork: Each single stone represents a single person that had stayed at Westerbork and died in a Nazi camp

All non-Dutch Jews were also sent to Westerbork. Additionally, over 15,000 Jews were sent to labor camps. Deportations of Jews from the Netherlands to Poland and Germany began at June 15th of 1942 and ended at September 13th 1944. Ultimately some 101,000 Jews were deported in 98 transports from Westerbork to Auschwitz (57,800; 65 transports), Sobibor (34,313; 19 transports), Bergen-Belsen (3,724; 8 transports) and Theresienstadt (4,466; 6 transports), where most of them were murdered. Another 6,000 Jews were deported from other locations (like Vught) in the Netherlands to concentration camps in Germany, Poland and Austria (like Mauthausen). Only 5,200 survived. The Dutch underground hid a large number of Jews, as many as 25,000-30,000; eventually, an estimated 16,500 Jews managed to survive the war by hiding. Some 7,000 to 8,000 survived by fleeing to countries like Spain, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, or by being married to non-Jews (which saved them from deportation and possible death). At the same time, there was substantial collaboration as the Amsterdam city administration, the Dutch municipal police, and Dutch railway workers all helped round up and deport Jews. It is said that in many cases, from arrest to deportation from Westerbork to the destruction camps in Poland and Germany, all work was done by ethnic Dutch. The last couple of years the Dutch media has spent considerable time and effort to debunk the widespread myth among the population that the Dutch Jews were met with considerable support and help from both the Dutch population as well as from the Dutch government during the Second World War; instead, more than 75% of the Dutch Jewish population died between 1940-1945, with the help and support of thousands of ethnic Dutch, while the majority of the population seems to have had a fairly indifferent view towards their Jewish compatriots during the war.

However, survivor rates differed in certain parts of the Netherlands. In Groningen, more than 90% of the Jewish population was killed; in Eindhoven, this number was just above 40%. Contrary to popular belief, Jewish survivors were met with hostility and indifference on the part of the Dutch government in the years following the Second World War.

In contrast to many other countries where all aspects of Jewish communities and culture were eradicated during the Shoah, a remarkably large proportion of rabbinic records survived in Amsterdam, making the history of Dutch Jewry unusually well documented.

Today

There are approximately 41,000 to 45,000 people in the Netherlands who are either Jewish as defined by halakha (Rabbinic law), defined as having a Jewish mother (70% – approximately 30,000 persons) or who have a Jewish father (30% – some 10,000 – 15,000 persons; their number was estimated at 12,470 in April 2006).[5][6].

Anne Frank

Most Dutch Jews live in the major cities in the west of the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht); some 44% of all Dutch Jews live in Amsterdam, which is considered the centre of Jewish life in the Netherlands. In 2000, 20% of the Jewish-Dutch population was 65 years or older; birth rates among Jews were low. An exception is the growing Orthodox Jewish population, especially in Amsterdam.

The Jewish-Dutch population after the Second World War is marked by certain significant changes: emigration; a low birth rate; and a high intermarriage rate. After the Second World War and the devastations which were caused by the Holocaust, thousands of surviving Jews migrated to Israel (still home to some 6,000 Dutch Jews) and the United States. In 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War in the Netherlands, the total number of Jews as counted in the population census was just 14,346 (down from a count of 154,887 by the German occupation force in 1941). Later, this number was adjusted by Jewish organisations to some 24,000 Jews living in the Netherlands in 1954 – nevertheless an enormous decrease compared to the number of Jews counted in 1941 – a number which was also disputed as the German occupation force counted Jews on basis of race, which meant that for example hundreds of Christians of Jewish heritage were also included in the Nazi census (according to Raul Hilberg in his book ‘Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: the Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945’, “the Netherlands … [had] 1,572 Protestants [of Jewish heritage in 1943] … There were also some 700 Catholic Jews living in the Netherlands [during the Nazi occupation] …”)

In 1954, the geographical spread of Dutch Jews in the Netherlands was as follows (province; number of Jews):

The sixties and seventies of the 20th century saw a lowering birth rate among Dutch Jews, while intermarriage increased; was the intermarriage rate among Jewish males 41% and among Jewish women 28% in the period of 1945-1949, figures from the nineties saw an increase of intermarriage to some 52% of the total number of marriages among Jews. Among so-called father Jews, the intermarriage rate is as high as 80%[7]. Some within the Jewish community try to counter this trend, creating possibilities for (single) Jews to come in contact with other (single) Jews, like the dating site Jingles, Jentl en Jewell. According to a research by the Joods Maatschappelijk Werk (Jewish Social Service), a large number of Dutch Jews has received an academic education, and more Jewish Dutch women are in the labor force compared to non-Jewish Dutch women.

The Jewish population in the Netherlands also seems to become more and more internationalised, with an influx of mostly Israeli and Russian Jews during the last decades. Approximately one in three Dutch Jews has a non-Dutch background. The number of Israeli Jews living in the Netherlands (concentrated in Amsterdam) runs in the thousands (estimates run from 5,000 to 7,000 Israeli immigrants in the Netherlands, although some claims go as high as 12,000 [8]), although only a relatively small number of these Israeli Jews is connected to one of the religious Jewish institutions in the Netherlands. Some 10,000 Dutch Jews have emigrated to Israel in the last couple of decades.

Religion

A majority of the affiliated Jews in the Netherlands (Jews part of a Jewish community) are affiliated to the Nederlands Israëlitisch Kerkgenootschap (Dutch Israelite Church) (NIK), which can be classified as part of (Ashkenazi) Orthodox Judaism. The NIK has approximately 5,000 members, spread over 36 congregations (of whom 13 in Amsterdam and surroundings alone) in 4 jurisdictions (Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and the Interprovincial Rabbinate), making it considerably larger than the Union of Liberal Synagogues (LJG) and thirteen times as large as the Portuguese Israelite Religious Community (PIK). In Amsterdam alone, the NIK governs thirteen functioning synagogues. The NIK was founded in 1814, and at its height in 1877, it represented 176 Jewish communities. This went down to 139 communities prior to World War II, and 36 communities today. Besides governing some 36 congregations, the NIK also holds responsibility for more than 200 Jewish cemeteries throughout the Netherlands (on a total number of Jewish cemeteries of 250).

Though the number of Dutch Jews is decreasing, the last decades have seen a growth of Liberal Jewish communities throughout the country. Introduced by German-Jewish refugees in the early 1930s, nowadays some 3,500 Jews in the Netherlands are linked to one of several Liberal Jewish synagogues throughout the country. Liberal synagogues are present in Amsterdam (founded in 1931; 725 families – some 1,700 members), Rotterdam (1968), The Hague (1959; 324 families), Tilburg (1981), Utrecht (1993), Arnhem (1965; 70 families), Enschede (1972), Almere (2003) and Heerenveen (2000; some 30 members); six rabbis are present to serve the several communities. The Verbond voor Liberaal-Religieuze Joden in Nederland (LJG) (Union for Liberal-Religious Jews in the Netherlands) (to which all the communities mentioned above are part of) is affiliated to the World Union for Progressive Judaism. On October 29th 2006, the LJG changed its name to Nederlands Verbond voor Progressief Jodendom (NVPJ) (Dutch Union for Progressive Judaism). The NVPJ has six rabbis: Ruben Bar-Ephraïm, Menno ten Brink, Sonny Herman, David Lilienthal, Awraham Soetendorp and Edward van Voolen

In the late 19th Century, at Oss in Brabant, the Netherlands, Jurgens and Van den Bergh – two family businesses of butter merchants – have thriving export trades to the UK.

In the early 1870s, they become interested in a new product made from beef fat and milk – margarine – which, they realise, could be mass-produced as an affordable substitute for butter.

Later, over in the North of England in the mid-1880s, a successful wholesale family grocery business run by William Lever starts producing a new type of household soap. The product contains copra or pine kernel oil, which help it lather more easily than traditional soaps made of animal fats. Unusually for the time, Lever gives the soap a brand name – Sunlight – and sells it wrapped in distinctive packs.

1904In the UK, Lever Brothers launch another product to make housework easier – Vim, one of the first scouring powders.

The company is incorporated in South Africa.

1906By now Lever Brothers has a thriving export trade and factories in three European countries as well as one each in Canada, Australia and the US. It has also started enterprises in the Pacific.

The same year Lever Brothers comes to an agreement with three other manufacturers to limit competition for raw materials, but is attacked by the press who, dubbing them ‘The Soap Trust’, accuse them of driving up prices. Lever Brothers subsequently sues the Daily Mail and in 1907 wins £50 000 damages – a massive settlement by the standards of the time.

1908Jurgens and Van den Bergh strike a deal to form an association and share profits while continuing to compete against each other.

1909Lever Brothers develops a palm plantation in the Solomon Islands and at the same time Jurgens and Van den Bergh set up a joint palm-planting venture in German Africa

1910Lever Brothers buys its first company in West Africa, WB MacIver Ltd, to secure supplies of palm oil for Port Sunlight.

1911Lever Brother’s first purpose-built research laboratory is constructed at Port Sunlight.

1912The first profit-sharing deal between Jurgens and Van den Bergh is terminated but the two companies continue to work together.

1913Leading businesses in the Europe join forces to create the Whale Oil Pool.

1914In the year that war breaks out, companies controlled by Lever Brothers are making about 135 000 tons of soap a year, while in the Netherlands Jurgens and Van den Bergh have both acquired a number of smaller businesses and each also controls seven margarine factories in Germany.

Lever Brothers acquires Pears Soap, a company founded in 1789, and Jurgens forms an alliance with Kellogg’s in preparation for expansion into North America.

Around this time Jurgens and Van den Bergh both establish factories in England, with one in Purfleet, Essex still manufacturing margarine today.

Lever Brothers also expands into the margarine market with the launch of Planters, increases operations in South Africa and sees its American business start to move into profit

1920Lever Brothers gains control of the Niger Company, which later became part of the United Africa Company.

1922Lever Brothers buys Wall’s, a popular sausage company which is beginning to produce ice cream to sell in the summer when demand for sausages falls.

1923The collapse of the German economy creates even harsher trading conditions for Jurgens and Van den Bergh.

1925Lever Brothers buys British Oil & Cake Mills, one of its major competitors and the manufacturer of New Pin Soap.

1926Lever Brothers launches its Clean Hands Campaign. Part of its child health policy, it educates children about dirt and germs and encouraging them to wash their hands ‘before breakfast, before dinner and after school.’

1927Jurgens and Van den Bergh, who have already teamed up with two European businesses, Centra and Schicht, join forces to create Margarine Unie – the Margarine Union. The union quickly gains new members, creating a large group of European businesses involved in the production of almost all goods created from oils and fats.

1928Margarine Unie acquires the French-Dutch Calvé-Delft group with factories in the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Czechoslovakia. The following year the Union also acquires the firm of Hartog’s.

1930On 1 January Unilever is officially established.

1930Procter & Gamble enters the UK market with the acquisition of Thomas Hedley Ltd of Newcastle and becomes one of Unilever’s largest rivals.

Mid 30sSoap production moves further from hard soaps to flakes and powders designed to make lighter work of household cleaning. This leads to expansion in the soap market.

1935Vitamins A & D are added to margarine, to levels equivalent to those found in butter.

1938After a campaign to improve public perceptions of margarine and the growth of vitamin-enriched brands including Stork in the UK and Blue Band in the Netherlands, sales of margarine rise to levels close to the highs of 1929.

Late 30s With the advent of the World War II, exchange controls and frozen currencies make international trading increasingly complex. In Germany, Unilever is unable to move profits out of the country and has to invest instead in enterprises unconnected with oils and fats including public utilities.

On 2 September Lever Brothers and Margarine Unie sign an agreement to create Unilever. The businesses initially aim to negotiate an arrangement to keep out of each other’s principal interests of soap and margarine production, but ultimately decide on an amalgamation instead.

1943Unilever becomes the majority shareholder in Frosted Foods which owns Birds Eye and the UK rights to a method of food preservation new to mass markets – deep-freezing. Years later, freezing will enjoy a resurgence of popularity when it’s shown to be one of the best ways of naturally preserving the goodness of fresh food.

Around the same time Unilever acquires Batchelor’s, which specialises in freeze-dried vegetables and canned goods.

1945At the end of the war, Unilever is able to regain control of its international network although remains shut out from Eastern Europe and China. The decentralisation of the business that was unavoidable during wartime is continued as a policy decision.

1946Birds Eye launches the first frozen peas in the UK. At this time meat, fish, ice cream and canned goods account for only 9% of Unilever’s total turnover

1954Sunsilk shampoo is launched in the UK and will become our leading shampoo brand – by 1959 it’s available in 18 countries worldwide.

1955On the 22 September Unilever airs the very first advertisement on UK commercial TV, which is for Gibbs SR toothpaste.

Fish fingers are introduced in the UK and within a decade they account for 10 percent of British fish consumption.

Dove soap is launched in US.

1956Unilever Research establishes its Biology Department, which in the 1980s will become the BioScience, Nutrition and Safety unit.

The PG Tips chimps make their debut appearance on the UK’s newly launched commercial TV station. Aired on Christmas Day, the commercial is inspired by London Zoo’s chimpanzees’ tea party. It results in PG Tips becoming the UK’s biggest selling tea brand.

The first Miss Pears is crowned in the Pear’s Soap famous beauty contest celebrating the beauty of natural, clear complexions.

1958In the Netherlands Unilever expands into frozen foods and ice cream through the acquisition of Vita NV, which was later to become the Iglo Mora Group.

1959Unilever launches its first margarine in a tub, replacing the traditional block wrapped in greaseproof paper, with Blauband in Germany followed by Flora in Britain.

1960All washing-related brands are placed under the control of a single company, Lever Brothers and Associates. Becel, the pioneering ‘health’ margarine, is launched after the medical community asks Unilever to develop a cholesterol-lowering food product. Initially it’s only available from pharmacies.

1961Good Humor ice cream is acquired in the US.

1963Cornetto, the first packaged and branded ice cream cone, begins its launch in Europe. Becel is repositioned as a diet margarine and distribution is widened to include the grocery sector.

1965Unilever forms its own specialist packaging business, the 4P Group, turning an internal service provider into a profit earning business. Cif is first launched, starting in France.

1967Captain Birds Eye/Iglo/Frudesa makes his first appearance in TV commercials.

1968Unilever attempts unsuccesfully to merge with Allied Breweries, one of the UK’s largest brewing companies.

1969Unilever airs the UK’s first ever colour TV commercial, which is for Birds Eye peas.

1982Viennetta ice cream gateaux is first launched, starting in Britain as a Christmas speciality.

1983Axe body spray for men (Lynx in the UK) is first launched, starting in France.

1984Unilever announces its Core Business Strategy and large acquisitions and disposals follow over next decade.

Brooke Bond is acquired in Unilever’s first hostile take-over.

1985Unipath launches a home pregnancy testing kit Clearblue, which is sold through pharmaceutical outlets in Britain.

1986The acquisition of Naarden doubles Unilever’s business in fragrances and food flavours. Chesebrough-Pond’s, which owns Pond’s and Vaseline, is acquired in the US.

1987Dove is relaunched in Europe, starting in Italy.

1989Calvin Klein and Elizabeth Arden/Fabergé are acquired while Magnum ice cream is launched in Germany.

1992Unilever enters the Czech Republic and Hungary, and establishes UniRus in Russia.

1993Breyers ice cream is acquired in the US and Organics shampoo is first launched in Thailand. By 1995 Organics is sold in over 40 countries.

The unprecedented decision is taken to practically eliminate trans-fats from food production in a rapid response to new research suggesting that their effect on blood cholesterol is at least as adverse as that of saturated fats.

1996Unilever makes an ambitious commitment to source all fish from sustainable stocks and starts working with the WWF to establish a certification programme for sustainable fisheries known as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).

Hindustan Lever and Brooke Bond Lipton India merge to create India’s largest private sector company, and the Helene Curtis hair care business in the US is acquired.

The Unilever Nutrition Centre is created.

Annapurna iodised salt is launched in India and starts to make a big impact on redressing iodine deficiency.

1997Kibon ice cream is acquired in Brazil. Unilever’s chemicals businesses including National Starch and Quest International are sold.

1999Shareholders authorise a special dividend of €7.4 billion and a share consolidation to reduce the number of shares per issue.

2000Bestfoods is acquired in the second-largest cash acquisition in history. Other acquisitions include Slim.Fast Foods, Ben & Jerry’s and the Amora-Maille culinary business in France.

Becel/Flora pro.activ spreads with cholesterol-lowering plant sterols are launched and become the first functional food to win FDA and EU approval.

The Unilever Health Institute – a centre of excellence in nutrition, health and Vitality – is launched.

Unilever screens the first interactive advertisement: it’s broadcast on Sky’s Open channel and promotes Chicken Tonight.

2001By 2001 Unilever has cut its brands from 1,600 to 900. DiverseyLever, Elizabeth Arden and Unipath are sold.

Unilever screens the first interactive TV commercial on a mainstream terrestrial channel in the UK; it promotes Colman’s and Olivio.

2002The portfolio is reshaped and enhanced through acquisitions and the sale of 87 businesses without acceptable growth or margin potential, generating €6.3 billion of sale proceeds.

The Skin, Hair and Deodorant businesses grow by nearly 11%, partly through the continuing success of Rexona, Lux and Dove. Dove sales are well in excess of €2 billion and its extension into the hair category is rolled out across Europe and Latin America.

Unilever is consulted by the WHO regarding the development of a Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health (published May 2004).

Our Nutrition Policy and Nutrition and Health Academy are launched.

Unilever leads a UK cross-industry initiative to reduce salt levels in soups and meal sauces and the Healthy Heart Brand signs a three-year sponsorship deal with the World Heart Federation.

By the end of 2003 the business is buying half its fish from sustainable sources and water consumption per tonne of production is down by 13%.

2004The Vitality mission is launched and the new Unilever brand rolled out, including the new logo which represents the diversity of Unilever, our products and our people.

At the end of Q3, Unilever revises its earnings guidance for the year to low single-digit earnings per share growth (beia) and announces that the development of leading brands is likely to be lower in Q3 than Q2.

A variety of factors have led to this, including further decline in Home & Personal Care markets in Western Europe and competition remaining intense in Laundry and Hair in Asia. Unilever’s popular weight management system, Slim.Fast, is also hit by huge new consumer interest in low-carbohydrate diets, particularly in the US.

Simplification and cost-saving activities proceed and Unilever chairmen Antony Burgmans and Niall FitzGerald comment that “We are stepping up our marketplace activity, including putting additional A&P funds behind a number of high priority marketplace initiatives.”

Axe Touch is launched with great success in the US and Sunsilk is rolled out in Europe.

2005In February, Unilever announces a series of changes to streamline its management and leadership. Antony Burgmans becomes non-executive chairman of both Unilever N.V. and Unilever PLC while Patrick Cescau takes on the new role of group chief executive, responsible for all operations. A review of the Group structure is also announced.

The changes are designed to provide greater clarity of leadership and a platform for Unilever to focus on the needs of customers and consumers, and so reignite growth.

In May, Unilever sells its global prestige fragrance business, Unilever Cosmetics International (UCI), to Coty Inc, of the US. The sale is in line with Unilever’s strategy to focus on core categories.

The Nutrition Enhancement Programme is completed, through which 16,000 products have been assessed for levels of trans fats, saturated fats, sodium and sugars, and where necessary, action taken.

Most history of the Jews in the Netherlands was generated between the end of the sixteenth century and World War II, when approximately 75% of Dutch Jews were killed.

The area now known as The Netherlands was once part of the Spanish empire but in 1581, the northern Dutch provinces declared independence. A principal motive was a wish to practise ProtestantChristianity, then forbidden under Spanish rule, and so religious tolerance was effectively an important constitutional element of the newly-independent state. This inevitably attracted the attention of Jews who were religiously oppressed in many parts of the world.

History of Jews in the Netherlands

Early history

Jews seem not to have lived in the province of Holland before 1593; but a few references to them are in existence which distinctly mention them as present in the other provinces at an earlier date, especially after their expulsion from France in 1321 and the persecutions in Hainaut and the Rhine provinces. The first Jews in the province of Gelderland were reported in 1325. Jews have been settled in Nijmegen, the oldest settlement, in Doesburg, Zutphen, and in Arnhem since 1404. In 1349 the Duke of Gelderland was authorized by the Emperor Louis IV to receive Jews in his duchy. They paid a tax, granted services, and were protected by the law. In Arnhem, where a Jewish person is mentioned as a physician, the magistrate defended them against the hostilities of the populace. When Jews settled in the diocese of Utrecht does not appear. (However, rabbinical records regarding kashrut – Jewish dietary laws – speculated that the Jewish community in Utrecht dated back to Roman times.) In 1444 they were expelled from the city of Utrecht, but they were tolerated in the village of Maarssen, two hours distant, though their condition was not fortunate. Until 1789 no Jew might pass the night in Utrecht; for this reason the community of Maarssen was one of the most important in the Netherlands. Jews were admitted to Zeeland by Albert, Duke of Bavaria.

In 1477, by the marriage of Mary of Burgundy to the Archduke Maximilian, son of Emperor Frederick III, the Netherlands were united to Austria and its possessions passed to the crown of Spain. In the sixteenth century, owing to the persecutions of Charles V and Philip II of Spain, the Netherlands became involved in a series of desperate and heroic struggles. Charles V had, in 1522, issued a proclamation against Christians who were suspected of being lax in the faith and against Jews who had not been baptized in Gelderland and Utrecht; and he repeated these edicts in 1545 and 1549. In 1571 the Duke of Alba notified the authorities of Arnhem that all Jews living there should be seized and held until the disposition to be made of them had been determined upon. In 1581, however, the memorable declaration of independence issued by the deputies of the United Provinces deposed Philip from his sovereignty; religious peace was guaranteed by article 13 of the Unie van Utrecht. As a consequence the persecuted Jews of Spain and Portugal turned toward Holland as a place of refuge.

Marranos and Sephardic Jews

The Sephardim (so-called Spanish Jews) had been expelled from Spain and Portugal years earlier, but many remained in the Iberian peninsula, practising Judaism in secret (see crypto-Jews or Marranos). The newly independent Dutch provinces provided an ideal opportunity for the crypto-Jews to re-establish themselves and practise their religion openly, and they migrated, most notably to Amsterdam. Collectively, they brought trading influence to the city as they established in Amsterdam.

In 1593 these Marranos arrived in Amsterdam after having been refused admission to Middelburg and Haarlem. These Jews were important merchants and persons of great ability. They labored assiduously in the cause of the people and contributed materially to the prosperity of the country. They became strenuous supporters of the house of Orange and were in return protected by the stadholder. At this time the commerce of Holland was increasing; a period of development had arrived, particularly for Amsterdam, to which Jews had carried their goods and from which they maintained their relations with foreign lands. Thus they had connections with the Levant and with Morocco. The Emperor of Morocco had an ambassador at The Hague named Samuel Pallache (1591-1626), through whose mediation, in 1620, a commercial understanding was arrived at with the Barbary States.

In particular, the relations between the Dutch and South America were established by Jews; they contributed to the establishment of the Dutch West Indies Company in 1621, of the directorate of which some of them were members. The ambitious schemes of the Dutch for the conquest of Brazil were carried into effect through Francisco Ribiero, a Portuguese captain, who is said to have had Jewish relations in Holland. As some years afterward the Dutch in Brazil appealed to Holland for craftsmen of all kinds, many Jews went to Brazil; about 600 Jews left Amsterdam in 1642, accompanied by two distinguished scholars – Isaac Aboab da Fonseca and Moses Raphael de Aguilar. In the struggle between Holland and Portugal for the possession of Brazil the Dutch were supported by the Jews.

With various countries in Europe also the Jews of Amsterdam established commercial relations. In a letter dated November 25, 1622, King Christian IV of Denmark invites Jews of Amsterdam to settle in Glückstadt, where, among other privileges, the free exercise of their religion would be assured to them.

Interior of the Amsterdam Esnoga, the synagogue for the Portuguese-Israelite (Sephardic) community which was inaugurated at August 2th 1675 and is still being used by the Jewish community.

Besides merchants, a great number of physicians were among the Spanish Jews in Amsterdam: Samuel Abravanel, David Nieto, Elijah Montalto, and the Bueno family; Joseph Bueno was consulted in the illness of Prince Maurice (April, 1623). Jews were admitted as students at the university, where they studied medicine as the only branch of science which was of practical use to them, for they were not permitted to practise law, and the oath they would be compelled to take excluded them from the professorships. Neither were Jews taken into the trade-guilds: a resolution passed by the city of Amsterdam in 1632 (the cities being autonomous) excluded them. Exceptions, however, were made in the case of trades which stood in peculiar relations to their religion: printing, bookselling, the selling of meat, poultry, groceries, and drugs. In 1655 a Jew was, exceptionally, permitted to establish a sugar-refinery. One particular Sephardic Jew also stood out during that time: his name was Benedictus de Spinoza (or Baruch Spinoza). He was excommunicated from the Jewish community in 1656 after speaking out his ideas concerning (the nature of) God in his famous work Ethics.

Ashkenazim

Many Ashkenazim (so-called “German Jews”) were also attracted to the newly independent Dutch provinces, especially near the end of the 17th century. However, the majority were displaced migrants escaping persecution in other parts of northern Europe, in particular the violence of the Thirty Year War (1618-1648) and the Chmielnicki Uprising in Poland in 1648. Because most of the immigrants were poor, they were less welcome. Their arrival in considerable number threatened the economic status of Amsterdam in particular, and with few exceptions they were turned away. Generally, they settled in rural areas where they subsisted typically as pedlars and hawkers. The result was that a large number of small Jewish communities existed throughout the Dutch provinces.

Over time, many of these German Jews attained prosperity through retail trading and by diamond-cutting, in which latter industry they retained the monopoly until about 1870. When William IV was proclaimed stadholder (1747) the Jews found another protector like William III. He stood in very close relations with the head of the DePinto family, at whose villa, Tulpenburg, near Ouderkerk, he and his wife paid more than one visit. In 1748, when a French army was at the frontier and the treasury was empty, De Pinto collected a large sum and presented it to the state. Van Hogendorp, the secretary of state, wrote to him: “You have saved the state.” In 1750 De Pinto arranged for the conversion of the national debt from a 4 to a 3% basis.

Under the government of William V the country was troubled by internal dissensions; the Jews, however, remained loyal to him. As he entered the legislature on the day of his majority, March 8, 1766, everywhere in the synagogues services of thanks-giving were held. William V did not forget his Jewish subjects. On June 3, 1768, he visited both the German and the Portuguese synagogue; he attended the marriage of various prominent Jewish families.

The number of Jews in the Netherlands grew substantially from the early 19th century up to World War II. Between 1830 and 1930, the Jewish presence in the Netherlands increased by almost 250% (numbers giving by the Jewish communities to the Dutch Census).

(*) Derived from those persons who stated “Judaism” as their religion in the Dutch Census

(**) Persons with at least one Jewish grandparent. In another Nazi census the total number of people with at least one Jewish grandparent in the Netherlands was put at 160,886: 135,984 people with 4 or 3 Jewish grandparents (counted as “full Jews”); 18,912 Jews with 2 Jewish grandparents (“half Jews”), of whom 3,538 were part of a Jewish congregation; 5,990 with 1 Jewish grandparent (“quarter Jews”)[2]

(***) Membership numbers of Dutch Jewish congregations (only those who are Jewish according to the Halakha)

The Holocaust

In 1939 there were some 140,000 Dutch Jews living in the Netherlands, among them some 25,000 German-Jewish refugees who had fled Germany in the 1930s (other sources claim that some 34,000 Jewish refugees entered the Netherlands between 1933 and 1940, mostly from Germany and Austria [3]). The Nazi occupation force put the number of (racially) Dutch Jews in 1941 at some 154,000. In the Nazi census, some 121,000 persons declared they were members of the (Ashkenazi) Dutch-Israelite community; 4,300 persons declared they were members of the (Sephardic) Portuguese-Israelite community. Some 19,000 persons reported having two Jewish grandparents (although it is generally believed a proportion of this number had in fact three Jewish grandparents, but declined to state that number in the fear they would be seen as Jews instead of half-Jews by the Nazi authorities). Some 6,000 persons reported having one Jewish grandparent. Some 2,500 persons counted in the census as Jewish were part of a Christian church (mostly Dutch Reformed, Calvinist Reformed or Roman Catholic).

In 1941, the majority of Dutch Jews were living in Amsterdam. The census in 1941 gives an indication of the geographical spread of Dutch Jews at the beginning of the Second World War (province; number of Jews – this number is not based on the racial standards by the Nazis, but by what the persons themselves declared to be in the population census):

In 1945 only about 35,000 of them were still alive. The exact number of “full Jews” who survived the Holocaust is estimated to be 34,379 (of whom 8,500 were part of a mixed marriage and thus spared from deportation and possible death in the Nazi concentration camps); the number of “half Jews” who were present in the Netherlands at the end of the Second World War in 1945 is estimated to be 14,545, the number of “quarter Jews” 5,990[4]. Some 75% of the Dutch-Jewish population perished, one of the highest percentages of all Nazi-occupied countries – despite the fact that Dutch Jews seemed to be more tolerated by and more integrated in the Dutch population than for example the Jews in Poland in the Polish population. Factors that influenced the great number of people perished were the fact that the Netherlands was not under a military regime, because the queen fled to England, and a shortage of hiding places. The Netherlands is a dense populated country, so there was less opportunity to survive in forests or other natural hidingplaces, for example.

During the first year of the occupation of the Netherlands, Jews were forced to register with the authorities and were banned from certain occupations. Starting in January, 1942, some Dutch Jews were forced to move to Amsterdam; others were directly deported to Westerbork, a concentration camp near the small village of Hooghalen which had been founded in 1939 by the Dutch government to give shelter to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution, but would fulfill the function of transit camp to the Nazi destruction camps in Middle and Eastern Europe during World War II.

Monument at Westerbork: Each single stone represents a single person that had stayed at Westerbork and died in a Nazi camp

All non-Dutch Jews were also sent to Westerbork. Additionally, over 15,000 Jews were sent to labor camps. Deportations of Jews from the Netherlands to Poland and Germany began at June 15th of 1942 and ended at September 13th 1944. Ultimately some 101,000 Jews were deported in 98 transports from Westerbork to Auschwitz (57,800; 65 transports), Sobibor (34,313; 19 transports), Bergen-Belsen (3,724; 8 transports) and Theresienstadt (4,466; 6 transports), where most of them were murdered. Another 6,000 Jews were deported from other locations (like Vught) in the Netherlands to concentration camps in Germany, Poland and Austria (like Mauthausen). Only 5,200 survived. The Dutch underground hid a large number of Jews, as many as 25,000-30,000; eventually, an estimated 16,500 Jews managed to survive the war by hiding. Some 7,000 to 8,000 survived by fleeing to countries like Spain, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, or by being married to non-Jews (which saved them from deportation and possible death). At the same time, there was substantial collaboration as the Amsterdam city administration, the Dutch municipal police, and Dutch railway workers all helped round up and deport Jews. It is said that in many cases, from arrest to deportation from Westerbork to the destruction camps in Poland and Germany, all work was done by ethnic Dutch. The last couple of years the Dutch media has spent considerable time and effort to debunk the widespread myth among the population that the Dutch Jews were met with considerable support and help from both the Dutch population as well as from the Dutch government during the Second World War; instead, more than 75% of the Dutch Jewish population died between 1940-1945, with the help and support of thousands of ethnic Dutch, while the majority of the population seems to have had a fairly indifferent view towards their Jewish compatriots during the war.

However, survivor rates differed in certain parts of the Netherlands. In Groningen, more than 90% of the Jewish population was killed; in Eindhoven, this number was just above 40%. Contrary to popular belief, Jewish survivors were met with hostility and indifference on the part of the Dutch government in the years following the Second World War.

In contrast to many other countries where all aspects of Jewish communities and culture were eradicated during the Shoah, a remarkably large proportion of rabbinic records survived in Amsterdam, making the history of Dutch Jewry unusually well documented.

Today

There are approximately 41,000 to 45,000 people in the Netherlands who are either Jewish as defined by halakha (Rabbinic law), defined as having a Jewish mother (70% – approximately 30,000 persons) or who have a Jewish father (30% – some 10,000 – 15,000 persons; their number was estimated at 12,470 in April 2006).[5][6].

Anne Frank

Most Dutch Jews live in the major cities in the west of the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht); some 44% of all Dutch Jews live in Amsterdam, which is considered the centre of Jewish life in the Netherlands. In 2000, 20% of the Jewish-Dutch population was 65 years or older; birth rates among Jews were low. An exception is the growing Orthodox Jewish population, especially in Amsterdam.

The Jewish-Dutch population after the Second World War is marked by certain significant changes: emigration; a low birth rate; and a high intermarriage rate. After the Second World War and the devastations which were caused by the Holocaust, thousands of surviving Jews migrated to Israel (still home to some 6,000 Dutch Jews) and the United States. In 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War in the Netherlands, the total number of Jews as counted in the population census was just 14,346 (down from a count of 154,887 by the German occupation force in 1941). Later, this number was adjusted by Jewish organisations to some 24,000 Jews living in the Netherlands in 1954 – nevertheless an enormous decrease compared to the number of Jews counted in 1941 – a number which was also disputed as the German occupation force counted Jews on basis of race, which meant that for example hundreds of Christians of Jewish heritage were also included in the Nazi census (according to Raul Hilberg in his book ‘Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: the Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945’, “the Netherlands … [had] 1,572 Protestants [of Jewish heritage in 1943] … There were also some 700 Catholic Jews living in the Netherlands [during the Nazi occupation] …”)

In 1954, the geographical spread of Dutch Jews in the Netherlands was as follows (province; number of Jews):

The sixties and seventies of the 20th century saw a lowering birth rate among Dutch Jews, while intermarriage increased; was the intermarriage rate among Jewish males 41% and among Jewish women 28% in the period of 1945-1949, figures from the nineties saw an increase of intermarriage to some 52% of the total number of marriages among Jews. Among so-called father Jews, the intermarriage rate is as high as 80%[7]. Some within the Jewish community try to counter this trend, creating possibilities for (single) Jews to come in contact with other (single) Jews, like the dating site Jingles, Jentl en Jewell. According to a research by the Joods Maatschappelijk Werk (Jewish Social Service), a large number of Dutch Jews has received an academic education, and more Jewish Dutch women are in the labor force compared to non-Jewish Dutch women.

The Jewish population in the Netherlands also seems to become more and more internationalised, with an influx of mostly Israeli and Russian Jews during the last decades. Approximately one in three Dutch Jews has a non-Dutch background. The number of Israeli Jews living in the Netherlands (concentrated in Amsterdam) runs in the thousands (estimates run from 5,000 to 7,000 Israeli immigrants in the Netherlands, although some claims go as high as 12,000 [8]), although only a relatively small number of these Israeli Jews is connected to one of the religious Jewish institutions in the Netherlands. Some 10,000 Dutch Jews have emigrated to Israel in the last couple of decades.

Religion

A majority of the affiliated Jews in the Netherlands (Jews part of a Jewish community) are affiliated to the Nederlands Israëlitisch Kerkgenootschap (Dutch Israelite Church) (NIK), which can be classified as part of (Ashkenazi) Orthodox Judaism. The NIK has approximately 5,000 members, spread over 36 congregations (of whom 13 in Amsterdam and surroundings alone) in 4 jurisdictions (Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and the Interprovincial Rabbinate), making it considerably larger than the Union of Liberal Synagogues (LJG) and thirteen times as large as the Portuguese Israelite Religious Community (PIK). In Amsterdam alone, the NIK governs thirteen functioning synagogues. The NIK was founded in 1814, and at its height in 1877, it represented 176 Jewish communities. This went down to 139 communities prior to World War II, and 36 communities today. Besides governing some 36 congregations, the NIK also holds responsibility for more than 200 Jewish cemeteries throughout the Netherlands (on a total number of Jewish cemeteries of 250).

Though the number of Dutch Jews is decreasing, the last decades have seen a growth of Liberal Jewish communities throughout the country. Introduced by German-Jewish refugees in the early 1930s, nowadays some 3,500 Jews in the Netherlands are linked to one of several Liberal Jewish synagogues throughout the country. Liberal synagogues are present in Amsterdam (founded in 1931; 725 families – some 1,700 members), Rotterdam (1968), The Hague (1959; 324 families), Tilburg (1981), Utrecht (1993), Arnhem (1965; 70 families), Enschede (1972), Almere (2003) and Heerenveen (2000; some 30 members); six rabbis are present to serve the several communities. The Verbond voor Liberaal-Religieuze Joden in Nederland (LJG) (Union for Liberal-Religious Jews in the Netherlands) (to which all the communities mentioned above are part of) is affiliated to the World Union for Progressive Judaism. On October 29th 2006, the LJG changed its name to Nederlands Verbond voor Progressief Jodendom (NVPJ) (Dutch Union for Progressive Judaism). The NVPJ has six rabbis: Ruben Bar-Ephraïm, Menno ten Brink, Sonny Herman, David Lilienthal, Awraham Soetendorp and Edward van Voolen

In the late 19th Century, at Oss in Brabant, the Netherlands, Jurgens and Van den Bergh – two family businesses of butter merchants – have thriving export trades to the UK.

In the early 1870s, they become interested in a new product made from beef fat and milk – margarine – which, they realise, could be mass-produced as an affordable substitute for butter.

Later, over in the North of England in the mid-1880s, a successful wholesale family grocery business run by William Lever starts producing a new type of household soap. The product contains copra or pine kernel oil, which help it lather more easily than traditional soaps made of animal fats. Unusually for the time, Lever gives the soap a brand name – Sunlight – and sells it wrapped in distinctive packs.

1904In the UK, Lever Brothers launch another product to make housework easier – Vim, one of the first scouring powders.

The company is incorporated in South Africa.

1906By now Lever Brothers has a thriving export trade and factories in three European countries as well as one each in Canada, Australia and the US. It has also started enterprises in the Pacific.

The same year Lever Brothers comes to an agreement with three other manufacturers to limit competition for raw materials, but is attacked by the press who, dubbing them ‘The Soap Trust’, accuse them of driving up prices. Lever Brothers subsequently sues the Daily Mail and in 1907 wins £50 000 damages – a massive settlement by the standards of the time.

1908Jurgens and Van den Bergh strike a deal to form an association and share profits while continuing to compete against each other.

1909Lever Brothers develops a palm plantation in the Solomon Islands and at the same time Jurgens and Van den Bergh set up a joint palm-planting venture in German Africa

1910Lever Brothers buys its first company in West Africa, WB MacIver Ltd, to secure supplies of palm oil for Port Sunlight.

1911Lever Brother’s first purpose-built research laboratory is constructed at Port Sunlight.

1912The first profit-sharing deal between Jurgens and Van den Bergh is terminated but the two companies continue to work together.

1913Leading businesses in the Europe join forces to create the Whale Oil Pool.

1914In the year that war breaks out, companies controlled by Lever Brothers are making about 135 000 tons of soap a year, while in the Netherlands Jurgens and Van den Bergh have both acquired a number of smaller businesses and each also controls seven margarine factories in Germany.

Lever Brothers acquires Pears Soap, a company founded in 1789, and Jurgens forms an alliance with Kellogg’s in preparation for expansion into North America.

Around this time Jurgens and Van den Bergh both establish factories in England, with one in Purfleet, Essex still manufacturing margarine today.

Lever Brothers also expands into the margarine market with the launch of Planters, increases operations in South Africa and sees its American business start to move into profit

1920Lever Brothers gains control of the Niger Company, which later became part of the United Africa Company.

1922Lever Brothers buys Wall’s, a popular sausage company which is beginning to produce ice cream to sell in the summer when demand for sausages falls.

1923The collapse of the German economy creates even harsher trading conditions for Jurgens and Van den Bergh.

1925Lever Brothers buys British Oil & Cake Mills, one of its major competitors and the manufacturer of New Pin Soap.

1926Lever Brothers launches its Clean Hands Campaign. Part of its child health policy, it educates children about dirt and germs and encouraging them to wash their hands ‘before breakfast, before dinner and after school.’

1927Jurgens and Van den Bergh, who have already teamed up with two European businesses, Centra and Schicht, join forces to create Margarine Unie – the Margarine Union. The union quickly gains new members, creating a large group of European businesses involved in the production of almost all goods created from oils and fats.

1928Margarine Unie acquires the French-Dutch Calvé-Delft group with factories in the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Czechoslovakia. The following year the Union also acquires the firm of Hartog’s.

1930On 1 January Unilever is officially established.

1930Procter & Gamble enters the UK market with the acquisition of Thomas Hedley Ltd of Newcastle and becomes one of Unilever’s largest rivals.

Mid 30sSoap production moves further from hard soaps to flakes and powders designed to make lighter work of household cleaning. This leads to expansion in the soap market.

1935Vitamins A & D are added to margarine, to levels equivalent to those found in butter.

1938After a campaign to improve public perceptions of margarine and the growth of vitamin-enriched brands including Stork in the UK and Blue Band in the Netherlands, sales of margarine rise to levels close to the highs of 1929.

Late 30s With the advent of the World War II, exchange controls and frozen currencies make international trading increasingly complex. In Germany, Unilever is unable to move profits out of the country and has to invest instead in enterprises unconnected with oils and fats including public utilities.

On 2 September Lever Brothers and Margarine Unie sign an agreement to create Unilever. The businesses initially aim to negotiate an arrangement to keep out of each other’s principal interests of soap and margarine production, but ultimately decide on an amalgamation instead.

1943Unilever becomes the majority shareholder in Frosted Foods which owns Birds Eye and the UK rights to a method of food preservation new to mass markets – deep-freezing. Years later, freezing will enjoy a resurgence of popularity when it’s shown to be one of the best ways of naturally preserving the goodness of fresh food.

Around the same time Unilever acquires Batchelor’s, which specialises in freeze-dried vegetables and canned goods.

1945At the end of the war, Unilever is able to regain control of its international network although remains shut out from Eastern Europe and China. The decentralisation of the business that was unavoidable during wartime is continued as a policy decision.

1946Birds Eye launches the first frozen peas in the UK. At this time meat, fish, ice cream and canned goods account for only 9% of Unilever’s total turnover

1954Sunsilk shampoo is launched in the UK and will become our leading shampoo brand – by 1959 it’s available in 18 countries worldwide.

1955On the 22 September Unilever airs the very first advertisement on UK commercial TV, which is for Gibbs SR toothpaste.

Fish fingers are introduced in the UK and within a decade they account for 10 percent of British fish consumption.

Dove soap is launched in US.

1956Unilever Research establishes its Biology Department, which in the 1980s will become the BioScience, Nutrition and Safety unit.

The PG Tips chimps make their debut appearance on the UK’s newly launched commercial TV station. Aired on Christmas Day, the commercial is inspired by London Zoo’s chimpanzees’ tea party. It results in PG Tips becoming the UK’s biggest selling tea brand.

The first Miss Pears is crowned in the Pear’s Soap famous beauty contest celebrating the beauty of natural, clear complexions.

1958In the Netherlands Unilever expands into frozen foods and ice cream through the acquisition of Vita NV, which was later to become the Iglo Mora Group.

1959Unilever launches its first margarine in a tub, replacing the traditional block wrapped in greaseproof paper, with Blauband in Germany followed by Flora in Britain.

1960All washing-related brands are placed under the control of a single company, Lever Brothers and Associates. Becel, the pioneering ‘health’ margarine, is launched after the medical community asks Unilever to develop a cholesterol-lowering food product. Initially it’s only available from pharmacies.

1961Good Humor ice cream is acquired in the US.

1963Cornetto, the first packaged and branded ice cream cone, begins its launch in Europe. Becel is repositioned as a diet margarine and distribution is widened to include the grocery sector.

1965Unilever forms its own specialist packaging business, the 4P Group, turning an internal service provider into a profit earning business. Cif is first launched, starting in France.

1967Captain Birds Eye/Iglo/Frudesa makes his first appearance in TV commercials.

1968Unilever attempts unsuccesfully to merge with Allied Breweries, one of the UK’s largest brewing companies.

1969Unilever airs the UK’s first ever colour TV commercial, which is for Birds Eye peas.

1982Viennetta ice cream gateaux is first launched, starting in Britain as a Christmas speciality.

1983Axe body spray for men (Lynx in the UK) is first launched, starting in France.

1984Unilever announces its Core Business Strategy and large acquisitions and disposals follow over next decade.

Brooke Bond is acquired in Unilever’s first hostile take-over.

1985Unipath launches a home pregnancy testing kit Clearblue, which is sold through pharmaceutical outlets in Britain.

1986The acquisition of Naarden doubles Unilever’s business in fragrances and food flavours. Chesebrough-Pond’s, which owns Pond’s and Vaseline, is acquired in the US.

1987Dove is relaunched in Europe, starting in Italy.

1989Calvin Klein and Elizabeth Arden/Fabergé are acquired while Magnum ice cream is launched in Germany.

1992Unilever enters the Czech Republic and Hungary, and establishes UniRus in Russia.

1993Breyers ice cream is acquired in the US and Organics shampoo is first launched in Thailand. By 1995 Organics is sold in over 40 countries.

The unprecedented decision is taken to practically eliminate trans-fats from food production in a rapid response to new research suggesting that their effect on blood cholesterol is at least as adverse as that of saturated fats.

1996Unilever makes an ambitious commitment to source all fish from sustainable stocks and starts working with the WWF to establish a certification programme for sustainable fisheries known as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).

Hindustan Lever and Brooke Bond Lipton India merge to create India’s largest private sector company, and the Helene Curtis hair care business in the US is acquired.

The Unilever Nutrition Centre is created.

Annapurna iodised salt is launched in India and starts to make a big impact on redressing iodine deficiency.

1997Kibon ice cream is acquired in Brazil. Unilever’s chemicals businesses including National Starch and Quest International are sold.

1999Shareholders authorise a special dividend of €7.4 billion and a share consolidation to reduce the number of shares per issue.

2000Bestfoods is acquired in the second-largest cash acquisition in history. Other acquisitions include Slim.Fast Foods, Ben & Jerry’s and the Amora-Maille culinary business in France.

Becel/Flora pro.activ spreads with cholesterol-lowering plant sterols are launched and become the first functional food to win FDA and EU approval.

The Unilever Health Institute – a centre of excellence in nutrition, health and Vitality – is launched.

Unilever screens the first interactive advertisement: it’s broadcast on Sky’s Open channel and promotes Chicken Tonight.

2001By 2001 Unilever has cut its brands from 1,600 to 900. DiverseyLever, Elizabeth Arden and Unipath are sold.

Unilever screens the first interactive TV commercial on a mainstream terrestrial channel in the UK; it promotes Colman’s and Olivio.

2002The portfolio is reshaped and enhanced through acquisitions and the sale of 87 businesses without acceptable growth or margin potential, generating €6.3 billion of sale proceeds.

The Skin, Hair and Deodorant businesses grow by nearly 11%, partly through the continuing success of Rexona, Lux and Dove. Dove sales are well in excess of €2 billion and its extension into the hair category is rolled out across Europe and Latin America.

Unilever is consulted by the WHO regarding the development of a Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health (published May 2004).

Our Nutrition Policy and Nutrition and Health Academy are launched.

Unilever leads a UK cross-industry initiative to reduce salt levels in soups and meal sauces and the Healthy Heart Brand signs a three-year sponsorship deal with the World Heart Federation.

By the end of 2003 the business is buying half its fish from sustainable sources and water consumption per tonne of production is down by 13%.

2004The Vitality mission is launched and the new Unilever brand rolled out, including the new logo which represents the diversity of Unilever, our products and our people.

At the end of Q3, Unilever revises its earnings guidance for the year to low single-digit earnings per share growth (beia) and announces that the development of leading brands is likely to be lower in Q3 than Q2.

A variety of factors have led to this, including further decline in Home & Personal Care markets in Western Europe and competition remaining intense in Laundry and Hair in Asia. Unilever’s popular weight management system, Slim.Fast, is also hit by huge new consumer interest in low-carbohydrate diets, particularly in the US.

Simplification and cost-saving activities proceed and Unilever chairmen Antony Burgmans and Niall FitzGerald comment that “We are stepping up our marketplace activity, including putting additional A&P funds behind a number of high priority marketplace initiatives.”

Axe Touch is launched with great success in the US and Sunsilk is rolled out in Europe.

2005In February, Unilever announces a series of changes to streamline its management and leadership. Antony Burgmans becomes non-executive chairman of both Unilever N.V. and Unilever PLC while Patrick Cescau takes on the new role of group chief executive, responsible for all operations. A review of the Group structure is also announced.

The changes are designed to provide greater clarity of leadership and a platform for Unilever to focus on the needs of customers and consumers, and so reignite growth.

In May, Unilever sells its global prestige fragrance business, Unilever Cosmetics International (UCI), to Coty Inc, of the US. The sale is in line with Unilever’s strategy to focus on core categories.

The Nutrition Enhancement Programme is completed, through which 16,000 products have been assessed for levels of trans fats, saturated fats, sodium and sugars, and where necessary, action taken.

Most history of the Jews in the Netherlands was generated between the end of the sixteenth century and World War II, when approximately 75% of Dutch Jews were killed.

The area now known as The Netherlands was once part of the Spanish empire but in 1581, the northern Dutch provinces declared independence. A principal motive was a wish to practise ProtestantChristianity, then forbidden under Spanish rule, and so religious tolerance was effectively an important constitutional element of the newly-independent state. This inevitably attracted the attention of Jews who were religiously oppressed in many parts of the world.

History of Jews in the Netherlands

Early history

Jews seem not to have lived in the province of Holland before 1593; but a few references to them are in existence which distinctly mention them as present in the other provinces at an earlier date, especially after their expulsion from France in 1321 and the persecutions in Hainaut and the Rhine provinces. The first Jews in the province of Gelderland were reported in 1325. Jews have been settled in Nijmegen, the oldest settlement, in Doesburg, Zutphen, and in Arnhem since 1404. In 1349 the Duke of Gelderland was authorized by the Emperor Louis IV to receive Jews in his duchy. They paid a tax, granted services, and were protected by the law. In Arnhem, where a Jewish person is mentioned as a physician, the magistrate defended them against the hostilities of the populace. When Jews settled in the diocese of Utrecht does not appear. (However, rabbinical records regarding kashrut – Jewish dietary laws – speculated that the Jewish community in Utrecht dated back to Roman times.) In 1444 they were expelled from the city of Utrecht, but they were tolerated in the village of Maarssen, two hours distant, though their condition was not fortunate. Until 1789 no Jew might pass the night in Utrecht; for this reason the community of Maarssen was one of the most important in the Netherlands. Jews were admitted to Zeeland by Albert, Duke of Bavaria.

In 1477, by the marriage of Mary of Burgundy to the Archduke Maximilian, son of Emperor Frederick III, the Netherlands were united to Austria and its possessions passed to the crown of Spain. In the sixteenth century, owing to the persecutions of Charles V and Philip II of Spain, the Netherlands became involved in a series of desperate and heroic struggles. Charles V had, in 1522, issued a proclamation against Christians who were suspected of being lax in the faith and against Jews who had not been baptized in Gelderland and Utrecht; and he repeated these edicts in 1545 and 1549. In 1571 the Duke of Alba notified the authorities of Arnhem that all Jews living there should be seized and held until the disposition to be made of them had been determined upon. In 1581, however, the memorable declaration of independence issued by the deputies of the United Provinces deposed Philip from his sovereignty; religious peace was guaranteed by article 13 of the Unie van Utrecht. As a consequence the persecuted Jews of Spain and Portugal turned toward Holland as a place of refuge.

Marranos and Sephardic Jews

The Sephardim (so-called Spanish Jews) had been expelled from Spain and Portugal years earlier, but many remained in the Iberian peninsula, practising Judaism in secret (see crypto-Jews or Marranos). The newly independent Dutch provinces provided an ideal opportunity for the crypto-Jews to re-establish themselves and practise their religion openly, and they migrated, most notably to Amsterdam. Collectively, they brought trading influence to the city as they established in Amsterdam.

In 1593 these Marranos arrived in Amsterdam after having been refused admission to Middelburg and Haarlem. These Jews were important merchants and persons of great ability. They labored assiduously in the cause of the people and contributed materially to the prosperity of the country. They became strenuous supporters of the house of Orange and were in return protected by the stadholder. At this time the commerce of Holland was increasing; a period of development had arrived, particularly for Amsterdam, to which Jews had carried their goods and from which they maintained their relations with foreign lands. Thus they had connections with the Levant and with Morocco. The Emperor of Morocco had an ambassador at The Hague named Samuel Pallache (1591-1626), through whose mediation, in 1620, a commercial understanding was arrived at with the Barbary States.

In particular, the relations between the Dutch and South America were established by Jews; they contributed to the establishment of the Dutch West Indies Company in 1621, of the directorate of which some of them were members. The ambitious schemes of the Dutch for the conquest of Brazil were carried into effect through Francisco Ribiero, a Portuguese captain, who is said to have had Jewish relations in Holland. As some years afterward the Dutch in Brazil appealed to Holland for craftsmen of all kinds, many Jews went to Brazil; about 600 Jews left Amsterdam in 1642, accompanied by two distinguished scholars – Isaac Aboab da Fonseca and Moses Raphael de Aguilar. In the struggle between Holland and Portugal for the possession of Brazil the Dutch were supported by the Jews.

With various countries in Europe also the Jews of Amsterdam established commercial relations. In a letter dated November 25, 1622, King Christian IV of Denmark invites Jews of Amsterdam to settle in Glückstadt, where, among other privileges, the free exercise of their religion would be assured to them.

Interior of the Amsterdam Esnoga, the synagogue for the Portuguese-Israelite (Sephardic) community which was inaugurated at August 2th 1675 and is still being used by the Jewish community.

Besides merchants, a great number of physicians were among the Spanish Jews in Amsterdam: Samuel Abravanel, David Nieto, Elijah Montalto, and the Bueno family; Joseph Bueno was consulted in the illness of Prince Maurice (April, 1623). Jews were admitted as students at the university, where they studied medicine as the only branch of science which was of practical use to them, for they were not permitted to practise law, and the oath they would be compelled to take excluded them from the professorships. Neither were Jews taken into the trade-guilds: a resolution passed by the city of Amsterdam in 1632 (the cities being autonomous) excluded them. Exceptions, however, were made in the case of trades which stood in peculiar relations to their religion: printing, bookselling, the selling of meat, poultry, groceries, and drugs. In 1655 a Jew was, exceptionally, permitted to establish a sugar-refinery. One particular Sephardic Jew also stood out during that time: his name was Benedictus de Spinoza (or Baruch Spinoza). He was excommunicated from the Jewish community in 1656 after speaking out his ideas concerning (the nature of) God in his famous work Ethics.

Ashkenazim

Many Ashkenazim (so-called “German Jews”) were also attracted to the newly independent Dutch provinces, especially near the end of the 17th century. However, the majority were displaced migrants escaping persecution in other parts of northern Europe, in particular the violence of the Thirty Year War (1618-1648) and the Chmielnicki Uprising in Poland in 1648. Because most of the immigrants were poor, they were less welcome. Their arrival in considerable number threatened the economic status of Amsterdam in particular, and with few exceptions they were turned away. Generally, they settled in rural areas where they subsisted typically as pedlars and hawkers. The result was that a large number of small Jewish communities existed throughout the Dutch provinces.

Over time, many of these German Jews attained prosperity through retail trading and by diamond-cutting, in which latter industry they retained the monopoly until about 1870. When William IV was proclaimed stadholder (1747) the Jews found another protector like William III. He stood in very close relations with the head of the DePinto family, at whose villa, Tulpenburg, near Ouderkerk, he and his wife paid more than one visit. In 1748, when a French army was at the frontier and the treasury was empty, De Pinto collected a large sum and presented it to the state. Van Hogendorp, the secretary of state, wrote to him: “You have saved the state.” In 1750 De Pinto arranged for the conversion of the national debt from a 4 to a 3% basis.

Under the government of William V the country was troubled by internal dissensions; the Jews, however, remained loyal to him. As he entered the legislature on the day of his majority, March 8, 1766, everywhere in the synagogues services of thanks-giving were held. William V did not forget his Jewish subjects. On June 3, 1768, he visited both the German and the Portuguese synagogue; he attended the marriage of various prominent Jewish families.

The number of Jews in the Netherlands grew substantially from the early 19th century up to World War II. Between 1830 and 1930, the Jewish presence in the Netherlands increased by almost 250% (numbers giving by the Jewish communities to the Dutch Census).

(*) Derived from those persons who stated “Judaism” as their religion in the Dutch Census

(**) Persons with at least one Jewish grandparent. In another Nazi census the total number of people with at least one Jewish grandparent in the Netherlands was put at 160,886: 135,984 people with 4 or 3 Jewish grandparents (counted as “full Jews”); 18,912 Jews with 2 Jewish grandparents (“half Jews”), of whom 3,538 were part of a Jewish congregation; 5,990 with 1 Jewish grandparent (“quarter Jews”)[2]

(***) Membership numbers of Dutch Jewish congregations (only those who are Jewish according to the Halakha)

The Holocaust

In 1939 there were some 140,000 Dutch Jews living in the Netherlands, among them some 25,000 German-Jewish refugees who had fled Germany in the 1930s (other sources claim that some 34,000 Jewish refugees entered the Netherlands between 1933 and 1940, mostly from Germany and Austria [3]). The Nazi occupation force put the number of (racially) Dutch Jews in 1941 at some 154,000. In the Nazi census, some 121,000 persons declared they were members of the (Ashkenazi) Dutch-Israelite community; 4,300 persons declared they were members of the (Sephardic) Portuguese-Israelite community. Some 19,000 persons reported having two Jewish grandparents (although it is generally believed a proportion of this number had in fact three Jewish grandparents, but declined to state that number in the fear they would be seen as Jews instead of half-Jews by the Nazi authorities). Some 6,000 persons reported having one Jewish grandparent. Some 2,500 persons counted in the census as Jewish were part of a Christian church (mostly Dutch Reformed, Calvinist Reformed or Roman Catholic).

In 1941, the majority of Dutch Jews were living in Amsterdam. The census in 1941 gives an indication of the geographical spread of Dutch Jews at the beginning of the Second World War (province; number of Jews – this number is not based on the racial standards by the Nazis, but by what the persons themselves declared to be in the population census):

In 1945 only about 35,000 of them were still alive. The exact number of “full Jews” who survived the Holocaust is estimated to be 34,379 (of whom 8,500 were part of a mixed marriage and thus spared from deportation and possible death in the Nazi concentration camps); the number of “half Jews” who were present in the Netherlands at the end of the Second World War in 1945 is estimated to be 14,545, the number of “quarter Jews” 5,990[4]. Some 75% of the Dutch-Jewish population perished, one of the highest percentages of all Nazi-occupied countries – despite the fact that Dutch Jews seemed to be more tolerated by and more integrated in the Dutch population than for example the Jews in Poland in the Polish population. Factors that influenced the great number of people perished were the fact that the Netherlands was not under a military regime, because the queen fled to England, and a shortage of hiding places. The Netherlands is a dense populated country, so there was less opportunity to survive in forests or other natural hidingplaces, for example.

During the first year of the occupation of the Netherlands, Jews were forced to register with the authorities and were banned from certain occupations. Starting in January, 1942, some Dutch Jews were forced to move to Amsterdam; others were directly deported to Westerbork, a concentration camp near the small village of Hooghalen which had been founded in 1939 by the Dutch government to give shelter to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution, but would fulfill the function of transit camp to the Nazi destruction camps in Middle and Eastern Europe during World War II.

Monument at Westerbork: Each single stone represents a single person that had stayed at Westerbork and died in a Nazi camp

All non-Dutch Jews were also sent to Westerbork. Additionally, over 15,000 Jews were sent to labor camps. Deportations of Jews from the Netherlands to Poland and Germany began at June 15th of 1942 and ended at September 13th 1944. Ultimately some 101,000 Jews were deported in 98 transports from Westerbork to Auschwitz (57,800; 65 transports), Sobibor (34,313; 19 transports), Bergen-Belsen (3,724; 8 transports) and Theresienstadt (4,466; 6 transports), where most of them were murdered. Another 6,000 Jews were deported from other locations (like Vught) in the Netherlands to concentration camps in Germany, Poland and Austria (like Mauthausen). Only 5,200 survived. The Dutch underground hid a large number of Jews, as many as 25,000-30,000; eventually, an estimated 16,500 Jews managed to survive the war by hiding. Some 7,000 to 8,000 survived by fleeing to countries like Spain, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, or by being married to non-Jews (which saved them from deportation and possible death). At the same time, there was substantial collaboration as the Amsterdam city administration, the Dutch municipal police, and Dutch railway workers all helped round up and deport Jews. It is said that in many cases, from arrest to deportation from Westerbork to the destruction camps in Poland and Germany, all work was done by ethnic Dutch. The last couple of years the Dutch media has spent considerable time and effort to debunk the widespread myth among the population that the Dutch Jews were met with considerable support and help from both the Dutch population as well as from the Dutch government during the Second World War; instead, more than 75% of the Dutch Jewish population died between 1940-1945, with the help and support of thousands of ethnic Dutch, while the majority of the population seems to have had a fairly indifferent view towards their Jewish compatriots during the war.

However, survivor rates differed in certain parts of the Netherlands. In Groningen, more than 90% of the Jewish population was killed; in Eindhoven, this number was just above 40%. Contrary to popular belief, Jewish survivors were met with hostility and indifference on the part of the Dutch government in the years following the Second World War.

In contrast to many other countries where all aspects of Jewish communities and culture were eradicated during the Shoah, a remarkably large proportion of rabbinic records survived in Amsterdam, making the history of Dutch Jewry unusually well documented.

Today

There are approximately 41,000 to 45,000 people in the Netherlands who are either Jewish as defined by halakha (Rabbinic law), defined as having a Jewish mother (70% – approximately 30,000 persons) or who have a Jewish father (30% – some 10,000 – 15,000 persons; their number was estimated at 12,470 in April 2006).[5][6].

Anne Frank

Most Dutch Jews live in the major cities in the west of the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht); some 44% of all Dutch Jews live in Amsterdam, which is considered the centre of Jewish life in the Netherlands. In 2000, 20% of the Jewish-Dutch population was 65 years or older; birth rates among Jews were low. An exception is the growing Orthodox Jewish population, especially in Amsterdam.

The Jewish-Dutch population after the Second World War is marked by certain significant changes: emigration; a low birth rate; and a high intermarriage rate. After the Second World War and the devastations which were caused by the Holocaust, thousands of surviving Jews migrated to Israel (still home to some 6,000 Dutch Jews) and the United States. In 1947, two years after the end of the Second World War in the Netherlands, the total number of Jews as counted in the population census was just 14,346 (down from a count of 154,887 by the German occupation force in 1941). Later, this number was adjusted by Jewish organisations to some 24,000 Jews living in the Netherlands in 1954 – nevertheless an enormous decrease compared to the number of Jews counted in 1941 – a number which was also disputed as the German occupation force counted Jews on basis of race, which meant that for example hundreds of Christians of Jewish heritage were also included in the Nazi census (according to Raul Hilberg in his book ‘Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: the Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945’, “the Netherlands … [had] 1,572 Protestants [of Jewish heritage in 1943] … There were also some 700 Catholic Jews living in the Netherlands [during the Nazi occupation] …”)

In 1954, the geographical spread of Dutch Jews in the Netherlands was as follows (province; number of Jews):

The sixties and seventies of the 20th century saw a lowering birth rate among Dutch Jews, while intermarriage increased; was the intermarriage rate among Jewish males 41% and among Jewish women 28% in the period of 1945-1949, figures from the nineties saw an increase of intermarriage to some 52% of the total number of marriages among Jews. Among so-called father Jews, the intermarriage rate is as high as 80%[7]. Some within the Jewish community try to counter this trend, creating possibilities for (single) Jews to come in contact with other (single) Jews, like the dating site Jingles, Jentl en Jewell. According to a research by the Joods Maatschappelijk Werk (Jewish Social Service), a large number of Dutch Jews has received an academic education, and more Jewish Dutch women are in the labor force compared to non-Jewish Dutch women.

The Jewish population in the Netherlands also seems to become more and more internationalised, with an influx of mostly Israeli and Russian Jews during the last decades. Approximately one in three Dutch Jews has a non-Dutch background. The number of Israeli Jews living in the Netherlands (concentrated in Amsterdam) runs in the thousands (estimates run from 5,000 to 7,000 Israeli immigrants in the Netherlands, although some claims go as high as 12,000 [8]), although only a relatively small number of these Israeli Jews is connected to one of the religious Jewish institutions in the Netherlands. Some 10,000 Dutch Jews have emigrated to Israel in the last couple of decades.

Religion

A majority of the affiliated Jews in the Netherlands (Jews part of a Jewish community) are affiliated to the Nederlands Israëlitisch Kerkgenootschap (Dutch Israelite Church) (NIK), which can be classified as part of (Ashkenazi) Orthodox Judaism. The NIK has approximately 5,000 members, spread over 36 congregations (of whom 13 in Amsterdam and surroundings alone) in 4 jurisdictions (Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and the Interprovincial Rabbinate), making it considerably larger than the Union of Liberal Synagogues (LJG) and thirteen times as large as the Portuguese Israelite Religious Community (PIK). In Amsterdam alone, the NIK governs thirteen functioning synagogues. The NIK was founded in 1814, and at its height in 1877, it represented 176 Jewish communities. This went down to 139 communities prior to World War II, and 36 communities today. Besides governing some 36 congregations, the NIK also holds responsibility for more than 200 Jewish cemeteries throughout the Netherlands (on a total number of Jewish cemeteries of 250).

Though the number of Dutch Jews is decreasing, the last decades have seen a growth of Liberal Jewish communities throughout the country. Introduced by German-Jewish refugees in the early 1930s, nowadays some 3,500 Jews in the Netherlands are linked to one of several Liberal Jewish synagogues throughout the country. Liberal synagogues are present in Amsterdam (founded in 1931; 725 families – some 1,700 members), Rotterdam (1968), The Hague (1959; 324 families), Tilburg (1981), Utrecht (1993), Arnhem (1965; 70 families), Enschede (1972), Almere (2003) and Heerenveen (2000; some 30 members); six rabbis are present to serve the several communities. The Verbond voor Liberaal-Religieuze Joden in Nederland (LJG) (Union for Liberal-Religious Jews in the Netherlands) (to which all the communities mentioned above are part of) is affiliated to the World Union for Progressive Judaism. On October 29th 2006, the LJG changed its name to Nederlands Verbond voor Progressief Jodendom (NVPJ) (Dutch Union for Progressive Judaism). The NVPJ has six rabbis: Ruben Bar-Ephraïm, Menno ten Brink, Sonny Herman, David Lilienthal, Awraham Soetendorp and Edward van Voolen

In the late 19th Century, at Oss in Brabant, the Netherlands, Jurgens and Van den Bergh – two family businesses of butter merchants – have thriving export trades to the UK.

In the early 1870s, they become interested in a new product made from beef fat and milk – margarine – which, they realise, could be mass-produced as an affordable substitute for butter.

Later, over in the North of England in the mid-1880s, a successful wholesale family grocery business run by William Lever starts producing a new type of household soap. The product contains copra or pine kernel oil, which help it lather more easily than traditional soaps made of animal fats. Unusually for the time, Lever gives the soap a brand name – Sunlight – and sells it wrapped in distinctive packs.

1904In the UK, Lever Brothers launch another product to make housework easier – Vim, one of the first scouring powders.

The company is incorporated in South Africa.

1906By now Lever Brothers has a thriving export trade and factories in three European countries as well as one each in Canada, Australia and the US. It has also started enterprises in the Pacific.

The same year Lever Brothers comes to an agreement with three other manufacturers to limit competition for raw materials, but is attacked by the press who, dubbing them ‘The Soap Trust’, accuse them of driving up prices. Lever Brothers subsequently sues the Daily Mail and in 1907 wins £50 000 damages – a massive settlement by the standards of the time.

1908Jurgens and Van den Bergh strike a deal to form an association and share profits while continuing to compete against each other.

1909Lever Brothers develops a palm plantation in the Solomon Islands and at the same time Jurgens and Van den Bergh set up a joint palm-planting venture in German Africa

1910Lever Brothers buys its first company in West Africa, WB MacIver Ltd, to secure supplies of palm oil for Port Sunlight.

1911Lever Brother’s first purpose-built research laboratory is constructed at Port Sunlight.

1912The first profit-sharing deal between Jurgens and Van den Bergh is terminated but the two companies continue to work together.

1913Leading businesses in the Europe join forces to create the Whale Oil Pool.

1914In the year that war breaks out, companies controlled by Lever Brothers are making about 135 000 tons of soap a year, while in the Netherlands Jurgens and Van den Bergh have both acquired a number of smaller businesses and each also controls seven margarine factories in Germany.

Lever Brothers acquires Pears Soap, a company founded in 1789, and Jurgens forms an alliance with Kellogg’s in preparation for expansion into North America.

Around this time Jurgens and Van den Bergh both establish factories in England, with one in Purfleet, Essex still manufacturing margarine today.

Lever Brothers also expands into the margarine market with the launch of Planters, increases operations in South Africa and sees its American business start to move into profit

1920Lever Brothers gains control of the Niger Company, which later became part of the United Africa Company.

1922Lever Brothers buys Wall’s, a popular sausage company which is beginning to produce ice cream to sell in the summer when demand for sausages falls.

1923The collapse of the German economy creates even harsher trading conditions for Jurgens and Van den Bergh.

1925Lever Brothers buys British Oil & Cake Mills, one of its major competitors and the manufacturer of New Pin Soap.

1926Lever Brothers launches its Clean Hands Campaign. Part of its child health policy, it educates children about dirt and germs and encouraging them to wash their hands ‘before breakfast, before dinner and after school.’

1927Jurgens and Van den Bergh, who have already teamed up with two European businesses, Centra and Schicht, join forces to create Margarine Unie – the Margarine Union. The union quickly gains new members, creating a large group of European businesses involved in the production of almost all goods created from oils and fats.

1928Margarine Unie acquires the French-Dutch Calvé-Delft group with factories in the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Czechoslovakia. The following year the Union also acquires the firm of Hartog’s.

1930On 1 January Unilever is officially established.

1930Procter & Gamble enters the UK market with the acquisition of Thomas Hedley Ltd of Newcastle and becomes one of Unilever’s largest rivals.

Mid 30sSoap production moves further from hard soaps to flakes and powders designed to make lighter work of household cleaning. This leads to expansion in the soap market.

1935Vitamins A & D are added to margarine, to levels equivalent to those found in butter.

1938After a campaign to improve public perceptions of margarine and the growth of vitamin-enriched brands including Stork in the UK and Blue Band in the Netherlands, sales of margarine rise to levels close to the highs of 1929.

Late 30s With the advent of the World War II, exchange controls and frozen currencies make international trading increasingly complex. In Germany, Unilever is unable to move profits out of the country and has to invest instead in enterprises unconnected with oils and fats including public utilities.

On 2 September Lever Brothers and Margarine Unie sign an agreement to create Unilever. The businesses initially aim to negotiate an arrangement to keep out of each other’s principal interests of soap and margarine production, but ultimately decide on an amalgamation instead.

1943Unilever becomes the majority shareholder in Frosted Foods which owns Birds Eye and the UK rights to a method of food preservation new to mass markets – deep-freezing. Years later, freezing will enjoy a resurgence of popularity when it’s shown to be one of the best ways of naturally preserving the goodness of fresh food.

Around the same time Unilever acquires Batchelor’s, which specialises in freeze-dried vegetables and canned goods.

1945At the end of the war, Unilever is able to regain control of its international network although remains shut out from Eastern Europe and China. The decentralisation of the business that was unavoidable during wartime is continued as a policy decision.

1946Birds Eye launches the first frozen peas in the UK. At this time meat, fish, ice cream and canned goods account for only 9% of Unilever’s total turnover

1954Sunsilk shampoo is launched in the UK and will become our leading shampoo brand – by 1959 it’s available in 18 countries worldwide.

1955On the 22 September Unilever airs the very first advertisement on UK commercial TV, which is for Gibbs SR toothpaste.

Fish fingers are introduced in the UK and within a decade they account for 10 percent of British fish consumption.

Dove soap is launched in US.

1956Unilever Research establishes its Biology Department, which in the 1980s will become the BioScience, Nutrition and Safety unit.

The PG Tips chimps make their debut appearance on the UK’s newly launched commercial TV station. Aired on Christmas Day, the commercial is inspired by London Zoo’s chimpanzees’ tea party. It results in PG Tips becoming the UK’s biggest selling tea brand.

The first Miss Pears is crowned in the Pear’s Soap famous beauty contest celebrating the beauty of natural, clear complexions.

1958In the Netherlands Unilever expands into frozen foods and ice cream through the acquisition of Vita NV, which was later to become the Iglo Mora Group.

1959Unilever launches its first margarine in a tub, replacing the traditional block wrapped in greaseproof paper, with Blauband in Germany followed by Flora in Britain.

1960All washing-related brands are placed under the control of a single company, Lever Brothers and Associates. Becel, the pioneering ‘health’ margarine, is launched after the medical community asks Unilever to develop a cholesterol-lowering food product. Initially it’s only available from pharmacies.

1961Good Humor ice cream is acquired in the US.

1963Cornetto, the first packaged and branded ice cream cone, begins its launch in Europe. Becel is repositioned as a diet margarine and distribution is widened to include the grocery sector.

1965Unilever forms its own specialist packaging business, the 4P Group, turning an internal service provider into a profit earning business. Cif is first launched, starting in France.

1967Captain Birds Eye/Iglo/Frudesa makes his first appearance in TV commercials.

1968Unilever attempts unsuccesfully to merge with Allied Breweries, one of the UK’s largest brewing companies.

1969Unilever airs the UK’s first ever colour TV commercial, which is for Birds Eye peas.

1982Viennetta ice cream gateaux is first launched, starting in Britain as a Christmas speciality.

1983Axe body spray for men (Lynx in the UK) is first launched, starting in France.

1984Unilever announces its Core Business Strategy and large acquisitions and disposals follow over next decade.

Brooke Bond is acquired in Unilever’s first hostile take-over.

1985Unipath launches a home pregnancy testing kit Clearblue, which is sold through pharmaceutical outlets in Britain.

1986The acquisition of Naarden doubles Unilever’s business in fragrances and food flavours. Chesebrough-Pond’s, which owns Pond’s and Vaseline, is acquired in the US.

1987Dove is relaunched in Europe, starting in Italy.

1989Calvin Klein and Elizabeth Arden/Fabergé are acquired while Magnum ice cream is launched in Germany.

1992Unilever enters the Czech Republic and Hungary, and establishes UniRus in Russia.

1993Breyers ice cream is acquired in the US and Organics shampoo is first launched in Thailand. By 1995 Organics is sold in over 40 countries.

The unprecedented decision is taken to practically eliminate trans-fats from food production in a rapid response to new research suggesting that their effect on blood cholesterol is at least as adverse as that of saturated fats.

1996Unilever makes an ambitious commitment to source all fish from sustainable stocks and starts working with the WWF to establish a certification programme for sustainable fisheries known as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).

Hindustan Lever and Brooke Bond Lipton India merge to create India’s largest private sector company, and the Helene Curtis hair care business in the US is acquired.

The Unilever Nutrition Centre is created.

Annapurna iodised salt is launched in India and starts to make a big impact on redressing iodine deficiency.

1997Kibon ice cream is acquired in Brazil. Unilever’s chemicals businesses including National Starch and Quest International are sold.

1999Shareholders authorise a special dividend of €7.4 billion and a share consolidation to reduce the number of shares per issue.

2000Bestfoods is acquired in the second-largest cash acquisition in history. Other acquisitions include Slim.Fast Foods, Ben & Jerry’s and the Amora-Maille culinary business in France.

Becel/Flora pro.activ spreads with cholesterol-lowering plant sterols are launched and become the first functional food to win FDA and EU approval.

The Unilever Health Institute – a centre of excellence in nutrition, health and Vitality – is launched.

Unilever screens the first interactive advertisement: it’s broadcast on Sky’s Open channel and promotes Chicken Tonight.

2001By 2001 Unilever has cut its brands from 1,600 to 900. DiverseyLever, Elizabeth Arden and Unipath are sold.

Unilever screens the first interactive TV commercial on a mainstream terrestrial channel in the UK; it promotes Colman’s and Olivio.

2002The portfolio is reshaped and enhanced through acquisitions and the sale of 87 businesses without acceptable growth or margin potential, generating €6.3 billion of sale proceeds.

The Skin, Hair and Deodorant businesses grow by nearly 11%, partly through the continuing success of Rexona, Lux and Dove. Dove sales are well in excess of €2 billion and its extension into the hair category is rolled out across Europe and Latin America.

Unilever is consulted by the WHO regarding the development of a Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health (published May 2004).

Our Nutrition Policy and Nutrition and Health Academy are launched.

Unilever leads a UK cross-industry initiative to reduce salt levels in soups and meal sauces and the Healthy Heart Brand signs a three-year sponsorship deal with the World Heart Federation.

By the end of 2003 the business is buying half its fish from sustainable sources and water consumption per tonne of production is down by 13%.

2004The Vitality mission is launched and the new Unilever brand rolled out, including the new logo which represents the diversity of Unilever, our products and our people.

At the end of Q3, Unilever revises its earnings guidance for the year to low single-digit earnings per share growth (beia) and announces that the development of leading brands is likely to be lower in Q3 than Q2.

A variety of factors have led to this, including further decline in Home & Personal Care markets in Western Europe and competition remaining intense in Laundry and Hair in Asia. Unilever’s popular weight management system, Slim.Fast, is also hit by huge new consumer interest in low-carbohydrate diets, particularly in the US.

Simplification and cost-saving activities proceed and Unilever chairmen Antony Burgmans and Niall FitzGerald comment that “We are stepping up our marketplace activity, including putting additional A&P funds behind a number of high priority marketplace initiatives.”

Axe Touch is launched with great success in the US and Sunsilk is rolled out in Europe.

2005In February, Unilever announces a series of changes to streamline its management and leadership. Antony Burgmans becomes non-executive chairman of both Unilever N.V. and Unilever PLC while Patrick Cescau takes on the new role of group chief executive, responsible for all operations. A review of the Group structure is also announced.

The changes are designed to provide greater clarity of leadership and a platform for Unilever to focus on the needs of customers and consumers, and so reignite growth.

In May, Unilever sells its global prestige fragrance business, Unilever Cosmetics International (UCI), to Coty Inc, of the US. The sale is in line with Unilever’s strategy to focus on core categories.

The Nutrition Enhancement Programme is completed, through which 16,000 products have been assessed for levels of trans fats, saturated fats, sodium and sugars, and where necessary, action taken.